1 Corinthians 3:15, Philippians 3:5-11, Matthew 19:16-30, John 12:20-26, Mark 8:27-38, Hebrews 11:1, Jeremiah 29:11
A ship went down in a storm, and only one man survived. He was fortunate enough to land on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. With just a few items in his pocket, he was able to build a small...
Jeremiah 2:4-13, Jeremiah 2:null, Jeremiah 1:, John 4:14
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Passage Context - Divided Kingdom, Common Struggles The prophet, Jeremiah, conducted the bulk of his ministry in the latter half of the...
Jeremiah 2:4-13, Jeremiah 2:null, Jeremiah 1:, John 4:14
Preaching Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Passage Context - Divided Kingdom, Common Struggles The prophet, Jeremiah, conducted the bulk of his ministry in...
Jeremiah 3:13, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10, Isaiah 49:15-16
In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of rejec...
Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...
Jeremiah 31::3-4 , Hosea 14:1-4, Joel 2:12-13 , Luke 15:3-7 , 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 , Psalm 103:8-12
Gentle God, we have wandered away from you, from your love, and from what gives you deepest delight in our lives, so our lives become hollow and hungry, lost and lonely. We return to you. Rece...
Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been s...
Isaiah 49:15-16, Jeremiah 2:13, Matthew 18:3, Galatians 4:6, John 10:27
We’re little children wandering the aisles of the internet because we’ve lost the presence of our loving parent. We are desperate for the attention of a good Father who sees us. We have no idea how to...
It happens sooner or later in every relationship: someone will let you down. We have a term for the earliest stages of a relationship: the “honeymoon phase”—that rosy time period when everything but d...
Jeremiah 31:3, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 27:10
James Loder, in his book The Logic of the Spirit, talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of reje...
Dawn grew up in a family in which she felt she had a fairly happy childhood. But in her adult years she struggled greatly with emotional, psychological, and physical maladies. She never felt a sense o...
Matthew 16:25, Luke 17:33, Proverbs 3:5-6, Jeremiah 29:11, James 1:5
Heavenly Father, our Savior told us, "Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for My sake will gain it." These are hard words. We confess that we oft...
Jeremiah 8:20, Matthew 23:37-38; 25:10, Luke 9:61-6, 2 Corinthians 6:2 , Acts 24:24–27, Hebrews 3:7–13
History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...
Jeremiah 17:9, Psalm 41:9, Proverbs 14:12, Matthew 23:27-28, Luke 12:2-3
To me one of the most terrifying scenes in all of literature is in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman . Willy Loman is a traveling salesman who feels that he is largely a failure. His self-pity...
Jeremiah 17:10, Mark 4:1-41, Mark 4:19, Matthew 13:22, Matthew 13:18-23, Luke 10:25-37
Thomas Merton describes those who never experience the gift of a contemplative life. His explanation for why some people never experience this can be found in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: [T...
The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...
Psalm 34:18, Jeremiah 29:11, Matthew 11:28-30, Romans 15:13, Isaiah 41:10
Many people are broken and without hope. It’s not surprising that a Brooking’s report in October 2019 noted how “deaths of despair” were affecting many sectors of society, particularly in America’s he...
I see my past drinking as a behavioral problem, a learned response to dealing (or not dealing) with emotional pain and stress. Once I achieved the excavation of my wounds, I no longer lived with the s...
In What’s So Amazing about Grace?, Philip Yancey offers an updated version of the parable of the prodigal son. Growing up in the countryside in Michigan, a young girl rebels against her old-fashioned...
Luke 18:13-14, Romans 5:8, Mark 2:17, 1 John 1:8-10, Isaiah 53:6, Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:23
A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world H...
I am told that when SAS soldiers parachute into unknown territory they are trained to pause before moving. They must first get their bearings and only then set out for their destination. That is wise ...