When I left Islam to follow Jesus, I didn’t know what it would cost me. I hadn’t realized what it would take to deny myself, lay my life down, and take up my cross (Matthew 16:24). I wasn’t aware that even the precious relationships of my family sho...
When I left Islam to follow Jesus, I didn’t know what it would cost me. I hadn’t realized what it would take to deny myself, lay my life down, and take up my cross (Matthew 16:24). I wasn’t aware that even the precious relationships of my family sho...
God doesn’t do things the way we think he should.  That theme emerges reading de-conversion stories or listening to people explain why they left Christianity based on supposedly intellectual arguments. God doesn’t fit our expectations. He is not li...
God doesn’t do things the way we think he should.  That theme emerges reading de-conversion stories or listening to people explain why they left Christianity based on supposedly intellectual arguments. God doesn’t fit our expectations. He is not li...
If you go to the mainstream poetry website Poetry Foundation and click on George Herbert’s name, what you read is this: “He is . . . enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional ly...
If you go to the mainstream poetry website Poetry Foundation and click on George Herbert’s name, what you read is this: “He is . . . enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional ly...
One of the great rediscoveries of the Reformation — especially of Martin Luther — was that the word of God comes to us in the form of a book, the Bible. Luther grasped this powerful fact: God preserves the experience of salvation and holiness from ge...
One of the great rediscoveries of the Reformation — especially of Martin Luther — was that the word of God comes to us in the form of a book, the Bible. Luther grasped this powerful fact: God preserves the experience of salvation and holiness from ge...
“Blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” It’s one of Jesus’s most enigmatic, controversial, and haunting statements. In the last two millennia, many a tortured soul have wrestled over this warning. Have I committed “the unforgivable si...
“Blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” It’s one of Jesus’s most enigmatic, controversial, and haunting statements. In the last two millennia, many a tortured soul have wrestled over this warning. Have I committed “the unforgivable si...
One of the most common questions a Christian can ask is also one of the most troubling: What does my ongoing sin say about me? The question is common because all Christians deal with ongoing sin, and many with patterns of repetitive sin. And the qu...
One of the most common questions a Christian can ask is also one of the most troubling: What does my ongoing sin say about me? The question is common because all Christians deal with ongoing sin, and many with patterns of repetitive sin. And the qu...
In March, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years I’ve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful — and supernatural — change in those last four years. In 2019, Nanci wro...
In March, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years I’ve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful — and supernatural — change in those last four years. In 2019, Nanci wro...
In a post-Christian, post-modern, post-everything society, God’s people are called to operate from courage, not fear. And when we live courageously, putting our hope in the reality of who God is and what God has already accomplished, it changes every...
In a post-Christian, post-modern, post-everything society, God’s people are called to operate from courage, not fear. And when we live courageously, putting our hope in the reality of who God is and what God has already accomplished, it changes every...
We actually have the words of God. This is almost too good to be true. And yet how often are we so accustomed to this reality — one of the greatest wonders in all the universe — that it barely moves us to handle the Bible with care (and awe), or at l...
We actually have the words of God. This is almost too good to be true. And yet how often are we so accustomed to this reality — one of the greatest wonders in all the universe — that it barely moves us to handle the Bible with care (and awe), or at l...
I recently spent three days with a group of pastors, almost all our time devoted to deep sharing of our life stories. We laughed at the silly things we’ve done. We marveled at the lineaments of God’s grace. We wept over sins, wounds, and struggles, ...
I recently spent three days with a group of pastors, almost all our time devoted to deep sharing of our life stories. We laughed at the silly things we’ve done. We marveled at the lineaments of God’s grace. We wept over sins, wounds, and struggles, ...
A vague bad feeling that you are a crummy person is not the same as conviction for sin. Feeling rotten is not the same as repentance. This morning I began to pray, and felt unworthy to be talking to the Creator of the universe. It was a vague sens...
A vague bad feeling that you are a crummy person is not the same as conviction for sin. Feeling rotten is not the same as repentance. This morning I began to pray, and felt unworthy to be talking to the Creator of the universe. It was a vague sens...
Sometimes I wonder if the apostle Paul might have been a runner. Running is a curiously common theme in his sermons and letters. He refers to his own life and ministry as running (1 Corinthians 9:26;Â Galatians 2:2;Â Philippians 2:16) and describes t...
Sometimes I wonder if the apostle Paul might have been a runner. Running is a curiously common theme in his sermons and letters. He refers to his own life and ministry as running (1 Corinthians 9:26;Â Galatians 2:2;Â Philippians 2:16) and describes t...
