2 timothy on Limitations

"Oscar Romero's Prayer" It helps, now and then,to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime onl...

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...

ABC News ran a story about neighborhood roads that have literally become commercial thoroughfares because GPS systems are routing traffic there, rather than along larger highways. There are other prob...

If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you're serving in the wrong place.

Many of life’s annoyances just have to be ignored. That doesn’t mean that we suppress, ignore, or deny every pain. Serious pain has to be confronted. But one mark of resilience is learning to tell whi...

One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.

These periods of struggling to overcome challenges are what people find to be the most enjoyable times of their lives. A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in cons...

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue h...

The Missing “Advent” Text A lectionary preacher moving from the fifth to the sixth Sunday after Pentecost in Year A will notice that a familiar chunk is missing, sent back in time to the third Sunday...

Introduction Believed to be some of Paul’s last words of his long ministry, 2 Tim. 4:6ff are Paul’s closing remarks to his beloved disciple, Timothy. Imprisoned in Rome by this point, Paul concludes ...

Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...

Statistics show that 80 percent of new pastors leave the ministry within five years. A friend once remarked, “If they were able to pastor churches without people, they might last ten years.” Most past...

Humble and self-forgetting we must be always, but diffident and apologetic about the gospel never.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptabl...

God as the Thanksgiving Hub Given how pervasive the theme of gratitude is in Scripture—and how my wife and I try to condition our children always to say “thank you” to anyone who shows them even the ...

The sufferings of Paul are not interruptions to his mission but are intrinsic to it; through them the message of Christ crucified is embodied.

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Gospel In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 we find the gospel that Paul preaches summarized in Christ’s crucifixion. Here in 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul’s gospel is encapsulated in Christ’...

When we don’t meet Christ in Scripture and are not regularly being discipled by or discipling others, it is impossible to discern what being a Christian means or to cultivate a relationship with God. ...

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a nig...

The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this ca...

You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’

Quite often the absence of immediate success is the mark of a genuine call., My Creator, My friend.

I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...