Hosea

The Good News or the Bad News? Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news? Well, if you’re preaching Hosea these next two weeks, it doesn’t matter what you want.  You’re getting the bad ...

The Good News or the Bad News? Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news? Well, if you’re preaching Hosea these next two weeks, it doesn’t matter what you want.  You’re getting the bad ...

Preaching Commentary The Good News or the Bad News? Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news? Well, if you’re preaching Hosea these next two weeks, it doesn’t matter what you want.  ...

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...

Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...

Presentations of the Matthean narrative that have had such an illustrious life in art and imagination are not complete without the disturbing involvement of Herod and the political killings that resul...

There’s a story about philosopher John Dewey walking with his young son on a cold, wet, and windy day. The boy, barefoot, was gleefully splashing in a puddle despite the weather. A concerned friend pa...

“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.

A people can be judged as better or worse according to what they love, and their nation can be assessed as healthy or unhealthy according to the condition of what they love.

Pastor: O God, You desire not the death of sinners, but rather that we turn from our evil way and live. We come before You, although we have sinned and deserve only Your wrath; yet we flee to Your m...

For decades I’ve tried to meet people where they hurt. I’ve preached and desired to see “justice for all,” and I still fervently believe in it. God loves justice and wants His people to seek justice (...

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother... We were created by the motherhood of love, a mother’s love which never leaves us.

I saw the blessed Trinity working. I saw that there were three attributes: fatherhood, motherhood, and lordship—all in one God. In the almighty Father we have been sustained and blessed with regard to...

A mother’s service is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is truest of all. None has been able to fulfill it properly but Christ, and he alone can.  We know that ou...

Brennan Manning recounts the story of an Irish priest traveling through a quiet countryside when he comes across an elderly peasant kneeling in prayer by the roadside. Struck by the man’s devotion, th...

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

We keep bringing in mechanics when what we need are gardeners.

While visiting a city in South America, the British Anglican pastor John Stott learned about a group of young Christian students who had become disillusioned with organized religion and formal churche...

Pastor: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, People: for his compassions never fail. Pastor: They are new every morning; People: great is your faithfulness. ...

Justice is less like finite land and more like the wildflowers that grow there, continually spreading as they bloom and re-seed themselves. Justice—like beauty—is rooted in infinity.

Prayer of Adoration Father: You know us and love us from eternity. Jesus: You love us enough to die for us and be rise again to give us eternal life. Spirit: You pour out love to us every day, in...

In 1890 Francis Thompson, a Roman Catholic poet, described God as “The Hound of Heaven”:  I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;  I fled Him,...

It’s been right here all along—the land teaching us how to un-hurry our hurry-sick hearts. Land speaks stunning truths through Scripture. The Hebrew word for land is eretz. It is the fifth most freque...

Overall, from a biblical perspective, the sustained fertility and habitability of the earth, or more particularly of the land of Israel, is the best index of the health of the covenant relationship. W...