James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, Proverbs 18:21, Colossians 4:6, Proverbs 10:19, Matthew 12:36-37, Proverbs 29:11, 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Proverbs 17:27-28, James 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 10:12-14, Psalm 141:3
Have you ever heard of Godwin's Law? While it may sound like some overly technical scientific hypothesis, it’s actually quite simple. Godwin's Law, first coined in 1990 by an an attorney and e...
Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the i...
Deconstruction isn’t a trendy thing to do, but it is a trend that is happening at scale in our country and passing from person to person. Anecdotally, when I look up various hashtags on TikTok, th...
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...
2 Timothy 3:16-17, Psalm 119:105, Hebrews 4:12, John 4:14
The Bible is like a vast geographical basin in which tributary streams feed into the currents of a parent river on its course to the ocean. The riverbanks are interspersed with openings where the trib...
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.
Matthew 22:21, Isaiah 5:8-9, John 6:63, Matthew 22:15-22, John 8:1-11, Colossians 2:2-3, 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Jesus Christ was prone to making comments which seem to support an almost infinite variety of exegesis. A remark like ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and ‘unto God the things that are ...
I grew up as a Christmas and Easter Methodist. Our family called ourselves Christians, but it was not an important part of our lives. I found church boring. When I turned eighteen, something happened ...
Matthew 7:13-14, 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Luke 18:8, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, Matthew 24:12-13
In March 2009, we received the results from the widest religious survey conducted in the United States, the ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) study. There is much to gain from this repor...
From the very beginning was Your Word, Which spoke this world into being, Your Word, Which thunders from the skies, Your Word, Which flows like mountain streams, Your Word, Which whispers in morning b...
Proverbs 29:25, Acts 4:13, John 15:18-19, 2 Timothy 1:7-8, Colossians 4:5-6, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 1:16
Why is it so intimidating to talk about Jesus in contemporary western culture? One obvious reason might lie in the ubiquitous negative portrayals of Christians in mainstream media. Sam Chan makes this...
Psalm 119:105, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Nehemiah 8:8, Acts 17:10-15, Galatians 5:1, Hebrews 4:12, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 15:15, 1 John 2:27
The Bible ceased to be a foreign book in a foreign tongue, and became naturalized, and hence far more clear and dear to the common people. Hereafter the Reformation depended no longer on the works of ...
In North America, the fastest-growing segment of the population, categorized according to religious affiliation, are the “nones,” meaning those who are done with formal religious affiliation. This inc...
Many of the modern controversies surrounding the Bible—for example, human sexuality, creationism and the “openness” of God—revolve around questions concerning hermeneutics. The science of hermeneutics...
James 1:22-24, Matthew 7:24-27, Colossians 3:16, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 5:12-14
I’m a huge advocate of catechisms, for example, having used this approach with my kids. I even wrote one. The strength of a catechism isn’t in memorizing the questions and answers of the catechism; th...
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...
Setting the Context: After the introductory tag from 2:14a this week’s text begins with “therefore” in 2:36 (Greek oun , which is the second word in verse 36 in the Greek text), making it especially...
Preaching Commentary Setting the Context: After the introductory tag from 2:14a this week’s text begins with “therefore” in 2:36 (Greek oun , which is the second word in verse 36 in the Greek text...
We praise You, Heavenly Father for sending us Your Word to instruct and convict us. You also sent Your Holy Spirit to guide and encourage us as we learn more about Your Word. Help us today to gain new...
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom: Enlighten by your Holy Spirit those who teach and those who learn, that, rejoicing in the knowledge of your truth, they may worship you and serve you from gen...
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, Ephesians 4:14, Mark 10:14, 1 Samuel 16:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 6:14, 2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 23:12, Proverbs 3:5, Acts 26:24
Preaching Commentary 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 t...
Matthew 11:16-19, Ephesians 4:14, Mark 10:14, 1 Samuel 16:7, 1 Thessalonians 2:4, 1 Corinthians 6:14, 2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 23:12, Proverbs 3:5, Acts 26:24
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...
I had just started dating my husband, Joe, when I met international speaker and bestselling author Keith Ferrazzi. He was a friend of Joe’s …but on this day he was an intimidating public figure. I wan...
O God, you are the sure foundation and the certain cornerstone. Building on you brings life, yet we often turn away and try to find hope by building on other foundations. Self-esteem, money, career, f...
There’s a story of a young girl on a plane who was reading her Bible, and there was a businessman sitting next to her. He looked over to her and he said, you don’t really believe that do you?” And she...
2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35
Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our li...
Matthew 28:16-20, 2 Timothy 2:1-2, Luke 9:23-24, Mark 8:34, John 13:34-35, Colossians 1:28-29, 1 Corinthians 11:1, 1 Corinthians 4:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7, Hebrews 6:11-12
One of the fastest ways to learn a language is by immersion . This term can mean a few different things, but the basic idea in all of them is that you are exposed to that language in your social inte...