A source of the intensest pleasure earthlings can experience, sex has also been a source of vexatious trouble for the human family since the beginning of history.
If I were making a list of benefits like the one Mike McKinley imagines, only this time using the devil’s actual logic, it might look more like this: Experience the excitement of new romance. Get th...
Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:18, James 1:14-15, Matthew 5:27-28, Hebrews 13:4, Proverbs 6:32
Some years ago I had a pastoral relationship with a couple of people who were deeply in love with each other. They believed that God wanted them to get married so they could consummate their love. The...
Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through...
Hebrews 10:26-27, Matthew 5:22, Romans 3:23, 1 John 3:4, Psalm 51:4, James 4:17
In his short publication, What Did Jesus Really Mean When He Said Follow Me? author and pastor David Platt describes an encounter between a friend of his and an American Taxi driver regarding the ...
James 2:10, Hebrews 10:26-27, Romans 2:6-8, Matthew 12:31-32, Luke 12:47-48
Like many popular adages, this one about all sins being equal before God is not entirely wrong. Every sin is a breach of God’s holy law. And whoever fails to keep the law in one point is guilty of bre...
Did you hear about how, after Adam stayed out late a few nights, Eve became suspicious? “You’re running around with another woman— admit it!” she yelled. "What other woman?!” Adam was mystified. ...
Locked into captivity by an airplane seat, a kindly disposition of keeping a friend company, or a telephone connection, we become ex officio confessors to those with troubled consciences and traces, o...
Pastor: Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number and been guilty of pride and unbelief, failed to delight in your Word, neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgressions and sins present m...
Lord, you tell us in your word that when we know the good we ought to do and fail to do it, we are in sin. Can we truly know the extent of our need for your grace? Are we conscious of the multitude of...
Genesis 3:10, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39, Romans 8:1, John 8:10-11, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Hebrews 4:13
The Summer Before Junior High School was filled with anticipation. I was excited to leave elementary school behind me. Junior high sounded so robust and adult. And I felt ready—with one caveat. Physic...
Song of Solomon 8:6-7, Hebrews 13:4, Matthew 19:4-6, Genesis 2:18, 21-24
Marriage begins when two people make the clear, unqualified promise to be faithful, each to the other, until the end of their days. That spoken promise makes the difference. A new relationship is init...
In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...
In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson describes what has become a reality of modern-day life-scandals happen every day, and no-one...
Ephesians 5:8-14, John 1:12, John 1:45, Hebrews 12:, Colossians 1:13-14
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Reconciled with God for Holiness Paul writes this letter to the Ephesians to exhort them to live lives that are in line with the great...
Titus 3:5, Hebrews 10:14, Romans 6:12-13, 1 John 1:9, 2 Corinthians 5:21
Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ...
1 John 2:19, Mark 10:17-22, John 21:15-19, James 2:17, Hebrews 6:4-6, Philippians 1:6, John 10:28-29
One afternoon I was at a local basketball court and started a pickup game with a guy I’d seen there a few times. He was quite a character—he cursed like a sailor and had so many tattoos on his body I ...
Perhaps you have been ensnared by a sinful habit that you will not abandon, and your guilt is so overwhelming you are ashamed to approach Christ. Whatever the reason for your broken intimacy with God,...
Hebrews 3:4, Colossians 1:16, John 1:3, Psalm 90:2, Genesis 1:1
A businessman moved over slightly as a young man crowded into the airplane seat next to him. As they both fastened their seat belts, the businessman good-naturedly asked whether the young man was trav...
Pastor: Satan and the powers of darkness seek to divide and destroy. And all too often God’s people either run from the battle in fear and defeat, or pick up the wrong weapons in the fight, relying ...
Kindness flows from you, Lord, pure and continual. You had cast us off, as was only just, but mercifully you forgave us; you hated us and you were reconciled to us, you cursed us and you blessed us; y...
We pray to You our Lord, our Savior, our Merciful God, that all our sins may be forgiven. Our sins are like a straight jacket, binding us, and keeping us from relationship with You. Although we know w...
Hebrews 10:38, James 1:6-8, Matthew 6:24, Romans 7:19, 1 John 2:15-17, Psalm 139:23-24, Luke 9:62
I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be carefu...
Matthew 4:12-23, Romans 5:12-21, Matthew 3:2-3, Isaiah 42:1-4, Hebrews 12:2, Genesis 1:3, Ephesians 2:1-10, Romans 8:3, Psalm 68:18, Ephesians 4:8
Preaching Angle: John Arrested, Jesus Preaches the Kingdom The major event in redemptive history which immediately precedes this passage is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. I can’t imagine a 40 d...
Romans 5:1, Romans 8:1, Galatians 2:16, Titus 3:5, 1 John 4:15, Isaiah 61:10, Hebrews 10:14
Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...
1 Corinthians 10:13, James 4:7, Hebrews 2:18, Matthew 6:13, Galatians 5:16, James 1:13-15
In the vast, frozen wilderness of the Arctic, an Inuit hunter used a clever technique to trap a wolf. He took a sharp knife and carefully coated its blade with layers of animal blood, letting each lay...