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It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole.
We groan and cry out in this painful life experience together.
Who can stand before this cosmically-sized love without being completely transformed?
Either way, you will ultimately face then refiner’s fire.
The problem is that Hell is never once mentioned in the Bible.
The word wrath isn’t an unloading of God’s fury and rage on the unrepentant.
The forgiveness of God is unconditional and preemptive.
'Love your enemies' ought to be sufficient.
The issue of arming our churches is now more relevant than ever.
An absolutely essential parable to the Church for this political season...
It is a sad reality how weak we are, how eagerly we consume what we are being fed, and how easily we allow our moral structures to fall.
The homeowner took a stand against every single person who violated the covenants.
The reason we can demonstrate the self-sacrificial love of Christ to the world rather than by fighting back is because we are people who do not fear death.
There is no question that we live in an incredibly unique time in history in which there is a strange mass collision of shallowness, superficiality, competing narratives that try to explain our existence, and depersonalization wrought by technology, all accompanied by a growing disdain for spirituality, in general, and religion, in specific, from a hyper-rationalistic culture.
If we aren’t living like Christ in the present, when times are relatively good, then we will never live like Christ when things get difficult.
One Sunday we showed up at our rented church building. Someone had spray painted a Nazi swastika on the front of the building.
There is a beautiful word, an elegant descriptor, that has been maligned, tarnished, lampooned, distorted, and completely misunderstood.
We must become people of the bottom; people who are below; people who are last; people who are in the back; people who are the least.
There are so many positions, angles, self-interested ideologies, and half-truths surrounding us that we are not sure what truth is anymore.
Have you ever felt utterly alone and wished that there was someone else who would just recognize you, say a word to you, or make you feel welcomed?
Our time would be better spent discussing how to demonstrate a greater love to the Muslims or how we can better serve them with our actions.
When did we get so thin-skinned and so easily offended by everything that people say or do to us as Christians?
It is true that it is simple to love those who are lovable, but it is quite a different thing to love those who are unlovable, to love those who don’t deserve to be loved, or to love those who are our enemies.
The way of Jesus does not have to be defended; it must be demonstrated. It never moves out in judgment; it moves out in love. It never extends in condemnation to the world; it extends in grace and mercy. The ways of arguing, defending, judging, and condemning always build up walls and embitter those in the world who are on the receiving end.