hebrews on True Love

True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.

Preaching Commentary Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the w...

But the Wisdom of God, which is His only-begotten Son, being in all respects incapable of change or alteration, and every good quality in Him being essential, and such as cannot be changed and convert...

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every ma...

Sisters and brothers, if the torch of your faith is lit right now, it might fizzle out within fifteen minutes of leaving here today. So refill the oil of your faith. Trim the charred ends away from yo...

Dear Lord, I pray that You would open my mind to the truth of Your Word by means of the Holy Spirit. Open my eyes to see Jesus. Open my heart to love Him more and more. Open my will to do only that wh...

The Christian's new life is a life of love, forgiveness, and kindness, modeled after the example of Christ.

I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So onc...

Why should I, who have been living from all eternity in the enjoyment of the Father’s love, go to cast myself into such a furnace for them that never can requite me for it? Why should I yield myself t...

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Corrie ten Boom tried to enlist a pastor to help hide Jews. Showing him a Jewish baby in need of rescue, the pastor said “No. Definitely not. We could lo...

God of light and truth, you are beyond our grasp or conceiving. Before the brightness of your presence the angels veil their faces. With lowly reverence and adoring love we acclaim your glory and sing...

When he was a young boy, twelfth-century church leader Bernard of Clairvaux fell asleep outside a church while waiting to go in for a Christmas Eve service. In his sleep he had a dream, a kind of visi...

How beautiful you appear to the angels, Lord Jesus, in the form of God, eternal, begotten before the daystar amid the splendors of heaven, “the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his...

One time, back when I was doing college ministry, I took a group of students camping. My wife came along with us. I had selected this really, really difficult hike. It was about ten miles long and alm...

He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by...

Holy God of light and glory: You alone are good. You alone are pure and righteous. And, therefore, You alone are worthy of our praise, our devotion and honor. In the brilliance of Your light, we are r...

Kevin Blue has spent much of his ministry career serving the poor in inner-city Los Angeles. In this excerpt he describes working with a war vet named Clarence: Richard, Tim, Caroline and Ellen move...

‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, Such a dainty, fragile child, But the one we know is bold and strong We can hear that in your dying song, Little boy, little boy. ‘Just a boy of flesh and b...

Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the way of the Lord.” Mark d...

Ronald Rohlheiser begins his excellent book, Our One Great Act of Fidelity , with a story of a young girl. She had awoken from a nightmare, convinced that monsters had invaded her room and were comin...

Though Christ was by nature divine, Christ did not cling to equality with God, but in utter self-emptying, took the form of a slave, and was born as a human. God have mercy. Appearing in h...

The Child of glory,  The Child of Mary,  Born in the stable;  The King of all,  Who came to the wilderness  And in our stead suffered;  Happy they are counted  Who to Him are near. When He Himself sa...

Jesus was a whole human who had a head and a heart and a spirit. I forget that Jesus came to this earth, not as a brain in a Mason jar floating in formaldehyde, but as an embodied, incarnate, integral...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...

As we call ourselves to worship, let us remember that our God is an awesome God, who in Jesus Christ has lived in our flesh, faced our temptations, gone to cross for, and lives today in heaven. In thi...

​​Heavenly Father, we come to you acknowledging our own unrighteousness.  We know that we fall short of your glory and your desires for us.  Still, we know that you love us with the love, humility, an...

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

O Lord our God, who first made light to shine out of darkness and now awakens us again to praise your goodness and ask for your grace: accept now, in your boundless mercy, the offering of our worship ...

So the first and most basic task of the Christian leader in the future will be to lead his people out of the land of confusion into the land of hope. Therefore, he must first have the courage to be an...

A leader is a dealer in hope.