O Lord and Father of the household of faith, we thank you for the gift of faith worked within us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for having called us to yourself, for consecrating us to your ser...
Luke 11:1-13, Matthew 18:23-35, Colossians 3:13, James 1:2-3
Context Jesus’ lesson on prayer in Luke’s gospel comes not in the context of a longer sermon (as with Matthew’s parallel in the Sermon on the Mount), but rather in response to a request from one of h...
Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes with a direct standoff,...
Preaching Commentary Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes ...
Romans 8:28, Matthew 6:34, Job 1:21, Psalm 46:1, James 4:14, Proverbs 27:1, Ecclesiastes 9:11
I interviewed Jamie Dimon, current CEO of JPMorgan Chase (the largest bank in the United States) and previous cofounder of the financial services conglomerate Citigroup (the third largest). While at C...
Two construction workers had taken a lunch break and opened up their lunch boxes. One of them looked inside his box and said, “Not baloney again! I can’t believe it. I hate baloney. This is the third ...
Proverbs 3:5-6 , Exodus 31:1-5 , 1 Kings 3:5-12, James 1:5, Matthew 25:34-40, Psalm 37:23
George Washington Carver was one of our great scientists, and he often prayed, addressing God as “Mr. Creator.” One night he walked out into the woods and prayed, “Mr. Creator, why did you make the un...
A life-threatening crisis came to my home when I was only 25. My wife suffered a near-fatal stroke and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors scrambled to keep her alive. Within hours, we were maki...
Matthew 7:24-27, James 4:13-15, Psalm 90:12 , Proverbs 16:3, Proverbs 21:5, Nehemiah 2:11-18
He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out the plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.
Luke 13:1-9, Luke 12:51, Job 4:7-9, Matthew 25:31-46, 1 Kings 4:25, Hosea 9:10, Isaiah 34:4, Jeremiah 5:17, Joel 1:7, Matthew 3:10, James 1:22
Preaching Commentary Straight Talk from Jesus Jesus Christ did not mince words. He seems to have always spoken the unvarnished truth, but, I think, with a smile on his face and compassion in his a...
Proverbs 16:18, Proverbs 11:2, Proverbs 29:23, Proverbs 8:23, James 4:6, Proverbs 16:5, 1 John 2:16, Philippians 2:3, Jeremiah 9:23, Daniel 4:28-33
“Casey at the Bat” has got to be the most well-known sports poem in American history. The “Mudville nine” are down four to two, with one inning left with two outs. Two men wait at second and third bas...
I know a woman who, after her diagnosis of cancer, prayed twice every day for God to heal her. A year later, as she entered her third round of chemotherapy, she said, “Well, it looks like once again, ...
Matthew 7:24-27, Galatians 6:7-8, Proverbs 16:3, Psalm 119:105, James 1:5
One of the most controversial decisions in Super Bowl history took place in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks, with twenty-six seconds remaining and trailing by four...
Genesis 3:8-13, Matthew 7:3-5, Romans 14:10-13, Luke 6:41-42, James 6:41-42, James 4:11-12, Ephesians 4:31-32
In the mid-1980s, I helped facilitate a series of conferences between top Soviet and American policy advisers on the question of how to prevent a nuclear war. The times were tense and the accusations ...
James 4:17, 2 Corinthians 4:5, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 16:23, Jeremiah 17:9
First, we get our calling wrong when we imagine that God needs us, to be the hero of our own story, rather than Christ. Second, we routinely misdiagnose the problem of our world, underestimating estim...
See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground; Thus to thoughtless mortals calling, In a sad and solemn sound "Youth on length of days presuming, Who the paths of pleasure tre...
Psalm 118:24, Colossians 3:17, Matthew 6:34, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Proverbs 3:6, James 1:17
Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it…Taking your children to school and ki...
Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:2, Isaiah 58:10, John 6:27, James 2:15-17, Matthew 6:33
In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...
I’ve often shared the story of my first experience of solitude and silence at the beginning of 1990. It was led by one of my mentors, Wayne Anderson, as part of a class I was taking at Fuller Seminary...
Joshua 4:6-7, 2 Peter 1:12-13, James 1:23-25, John 14:26, Revelation 2:5
In the film Memento , we meet Leonard, who is searching for the man who killed his wife. He appears to be the typical Hollywood hero of the early 2000s. The hair is right; the jaw line, the atmospher...
Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Isaiah 55:3, Matthew 11:15, Luke 8:8, James 1:19-20, Psalm 46:10
The very first word of the Rule of St. Benedict, that famous text that has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth century, is listen . I want for us to put listening back where i...
Ephesians 5:16, Colossians 3:23, Ecclesiastes 6:7, Psalm 90:12, James 4:14
It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...
Matthew 6:25-34, Galatians 1:10, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 23:1-12, 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, James 4:1-10, 1 Peter 5:1-11
Harold Kushner wrote about a very bright, driven pre-med student at a very competitive college. While traveling in the East the summer before his junior year, he met a guru who said, “Don’t you see yo...
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity
Luke 6:17-26, Matthew 5:1-12, Luke 4:33, Luke 16:19-31, Psalm 9:10, Psalm 12:6, Isaiah 41:17, Zephaniah 3:12, Luke 4:18, James 4:8-10, Luke 5:11, 28, Luke 14:25-33, 1 Peter 4:14, Jeremiah 6:13
Preaching Commentary The context The beatitudes are one of the most well-known aspects of Jesus teaching. As in the more familiar account in Matthew (5:1-12), Luke presents these words as Jesus’ fi...