1 corinthians on Disorder

The man who prosecuted the infamous Manson family for their murders later wrote a book titled Helter Skelter. This phrase was taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Manson...

Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

Our bodies, created in the image of the Triune God, have much to teach us about the virtues of conversation. The human body is a wondrous symphony of diverse parts: 206 bones and over 600 muscles, con...

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, ...

While formally or structurally speaking, there are mechanisms of discipline operative in both the convent and the prison, in both the factory and the monastery, more specifically, these disciplines an...

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

Maleness and femaleness is the fundamental way we carry our relational design. Interestingly, the English word sexuality comes from the Latin word sexus, which means “being divided, cut off, separated...

God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. God bless us with righteous anger at injustice, oppression, and exp...

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

If sickness has come into the world through sin, which is conceded, it must be got out of the world through God’s great remedy for sin, the cross of Jesus Christ. If sickness is only a natural condi...

Judgment and joy don’t go well together – no, judgment leads to grumbling. I’m sure you’ve met people in your life who are hard to please – maybe even your parents, or your boss. People for whom n...

The Church is not a clean, well-lit place where everything runs smoothly and actions automatically match ideals. It is, in the words of the Gospel, a field of chaff and wheat growing up together and b...

Christian disunity is and remains a massive impediment to the gospel itself—the proclamation of which is and should be evangelicalism’s strong suit.

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others…but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a ...

Divine Creator, your ways are above our ways. No matter how hard we try, you will always confound us. Too often we try to reduce you into something we can fully comprehend, or something we can control...

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, our ...

This kingdom, however, is not a geographical place; it is not even heaven. It is the in-breaking rule of God over the lives of those who submit to God’s rule. It is God’s rule over a creation gone ast...

How many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside!

For "Church" is a name of harmony and concord, not of division.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Mise En Place?" (translated literally everything in its place) Pronounced ​[mi zɑ̃ ˈplas], it comes from the French culinary world, and has to do with putting all ...

Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to their sin.

Grace to you—grace that crosses every boundary. And peace to you—peace that dismantles every wall. May grace and peace settle in your bones, may they calm your heart and mind, and may they spill out f...

There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at ...

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sin...

We may have more disagreements with nonbelievers, but our disagreements with fellow believers are more problematic and more emotionally charged.

Comparison is the root of most of the misery we feel in life. Comparison makes it impossible to view ourselves from any sort of godly perspective. It is an absolute snare for the soul. Consider what c...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

Christ is building His kingdom with earth's broken things. Men want only the strong, the successful, the victorious, the unbroken, in building their kingdoms; but God is the God of the unsuccessfu...

We were created to communicate, to speak truth fully to one another, so that we might be members of one another. To be members of one another means we must learn to trust one another. Trust, like trut...

Lord Almighty, you tell us that if we have a quarrel with another, we are to make amends before coming to worship. We seek your mercy today – for all of us live at odds with others to varying degrees....