job on Enemy

My friend Carter Conlon has ministered in New York City for more than two decades. Yet he spent many of his early years on a farm. He recalls a barnyard scene that illustrates the status of Satan. A f...

Lord, Holy One, have mercy on us. We confess our sins to you. We have fallen short of your glory and without your mercy and grace, we would be dust. We repent now. Lord, as we enter into this Lenten s...

People who are suffering often turn to their pastors, hoping to understand their experiences and seeking help with the feeling that God has abandoned them. Sometimes their faith is firm, but their sou...

I’m a paranoid agnostic. I don’t think God exists, but I’m sure there is some sort of force out there working against me.

In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its...

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.

It is wicked to wrong God; but still worse to think oneself wronged by God. And men and women think this oftener than one would suppose.

I am ignorant of His designs, but I will not cease to believe in them because I cannot penetrate them. And I will prefer to doubt my own lights rather than His justice.

Part of the spirit dies a little each time it’s asked to carry more than its weight in terror, violence, and betrayal.

Most of us are aware of various persecutions that took place during the first few centuries of the church’s existence. One particularly brutal local persecution took place during the reign of Nero, wh...

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

When my eldest son, Drew, was a toddler, bedtime was a battleground in our house. I think he felt cheated by the prospect of sleep. He hated the thought of going to bed while the rest of the world con...

The accomplished science fiction writer and futurist H.G. Wells lived through the dark days of the Blitz in London (during the Second World War). One evening, a fellow writer named Elizabeth Bowen fou...

For these attacks do not contribute to make us frail but rather show us to be what we are.

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young...

God, we come with hesitant steps and uncertain motives to sweep out the corners where sin has accumulated, and uncover the ways we have strayed from Your truth. Expose the empty and barren places wher...

John Chrysostom, the eloquent Church Father, had incurred the wrath of the Byzantine (aka Roman) Emperor Arcadius. Enraged, the emperor consulted his counselors on how to punish the powerful preacher....

In the deeply moving novel Silence by Shusaku Endo, the protagonist, a young Jesuit priest named Sebastião Rodrigues describes in horror what it is like to watch two of his disciples, Japanese nationa...

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.

In a poignant tribute written after his son’s passing in a climbing accident, Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects: When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer he...

All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself

Divine Creator, your ways are above our ways. No matter how hard we try, you will always confound us. Too often we try to reduce you into something we can fully comprehend, or something we can control...

Lord, You have authority in all places, times, and circumstances. Lord, You are good in all places, times, and circumstances.  Lord, meet us here, now in all our many needs for You to move.

God of life, all that defeats life you have vanquished. All that opposes love you have overcome. We are in awe of your glory. We are in debt to your grace. We are in love with your Christ. Raise us up...

“If your eye causes you to sin…” is one of the boldest phrases from the mouth of Jesus, appearing three times in the gospels. Our eyes not only leads us into sinful behaviors, but also to take in sinf...

Unbelief in the Wilderness The author of Hebrews concludes chapter 3 with the history of Israel’s unbelief in the wilderness which kept the unfaithful among them from entering into the rest of His pr...

There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...