1 John 4:1, 1 Corinthians 12:10, 1 Kings 19:11-13 , Genesis 41:15-40 , Isaiah 30:20-21, Matthew 4:1-11, 1 John 4:1-3, Psalm 42:5-11
Scripture also speaks of “discernment of spirits” and encourages us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” This aspect of discernment helps us to distinguish the real from the phony, ...
As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...
The True Self is all about right relationship, not requirements. It’s not about being correct; it’s about being connected, which you always were—you just didn’t realize it.
Holy One, Giver of every good and perfect gift It is your great grace that offers us salvation It is grace upon grace that gives us the chance to join you in your saving work You trust us that much Yo...
In a documentary film on the medieval statesmen William the Marshal, professor Thomas Asbridge shares his experience of the power behind Marshal’s knighting ceremony. It provides an interesting coroll...
Preaching Commentary Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, the...
Genesis 2:23-25, Song of Solomon 7:10-12, Hosea 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, Ephesians 5:31-32, Psalm 63:1-5
As we begin to awaken fully to the spiritual, social and sexual dimensions of ourselves in God’s presence, we find that they are inseparably intertwined and not to be compartmentalized. In fact, many ...
Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.
All these changes did the Merciful One effect: Stripping of His glory and putting on a body; For He had devised a way to reclothe Adam, In that glory which Adam had stripped off.
Some years ago an army sharpshooter was visiting a small town. He was surprised to find bull’s-eyes with bullet holes in the exact center all throughout the village. “Someone or some one’s here must b...
Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....
Lord God, You have called us to yourself and made us into a people. We belong to you, and we belong to one another. But in our self-focused lives, we have forgotten that. We have lived for ourselves. ...
Maybe God has given some people belief like a pier, to stand on (and God has given those people’s steadiness to the church, to me, as a reminder, as an aid), and maybe God has given others something e...
Throughout the Old Testament this was always the idea of a sin-offering - that of a perfect victim; without offense on its own account, taking the place of the offender; the transference of the offend...
Luke 22:19-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Matthew 26:26-28, Acts 2:42, Acts 20:7, John 6:35
If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covena...
Luke 2:10-14, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Matthew 1:18-25
The Advent season is that time when we seek to, in a manner of speaking, mute our memory of what has already happened, that we might brighten our joy that it happened. We leave the already of His adve...
Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ...
Galatians 5:14-15, John 8:32, Micah 6:8, 1 Corinthians 1:10, Matthew 7:3-5, Romans 12:2, James 3:17
People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...
The Creed was the focused, worshipful expression of people whose lives had been totally transformed by the Bible and by the risen Jesus Christ. The Creed’s words are not windows with the shutters pull...
Isaiah 60:1, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 2:19-22, Galatians 6:2, 1 Peter 2:9
Leader: Arise! Shine! Christ’s Church has assembled. People: We are one body, with Christ as our head. Leader: What kind of body is this? People: The Body of Christ, brought together not by huma...
John 6:53-56, Matthew 26:26-28, Colossians 1:19-20, Hebrews 2:14-15, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, Philippians 2:6-8
The Incarnation [and I might add Communion] remains a scandal to anyone who wants religion to be a purely spiritual matter, an etherized, bloodless bliss.
Romans 8:12-17, 1 Corinthians 6:, Galatians 5:18, Matthew 7:9-11
Preaching Commentary Context Matters If you have ever taken an introduction to exegesis course, you may remember one of the most important rules for properly understanding a given text: look at wha...
Matthew 10:40-42, John 20:21, Acts 1:18, 2 Peter 2:13, Luke 17:10, John 3:18, Matthew 28:19, Ephesians 5:20, James 5:14, Colossians 3:17, Acts 3:6, 1 Corinthians 6:11, Acts 20:35
preaching commentary The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, th...
Matthew 7:24-25, Luke 6:48, Isaiah 28:16, 1 Corinthians 3:11, Ephesians 2:19-20
At the bottom of every person’s heart there is an uttermost foundation. At the beginning of The Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings movie, Gandalf battles the Balrog while they plummet down an in...