john on Ministry

Michelangelo, the celebrated Renaissance artist, is said to have worn a lighted candle on his cap while he worked, which worked by casting light over the marble or canvas so that no shadow of himself ...

We bring before God those times when God’s Kingdom and love have not shaped our lives, asking to be forgiven and made new. Lord Jesus, too often this week you have only been a small part of our live...

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....

Loving and forgiving God, we want to answer your invitation to experience a Christ-centered life. Yet all too often, our lives are much more centered around our ourselves than around Jesus. Jesus send...

Should anyone knock at my heart and say, “Who Lives here? I should reply, “Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus Christ.”

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What . Miller took this point to an even further extreme. In his book, he tells a story about one occasion when he was speaking to a class at...

But we must remember there is only way that we can participate in Christ’s victory over the demonic Powers. We can only do it by doing it his way. If we try to do it our way we will be back into the r...

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk, or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of God t...

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier on a cot in a hospital. “You have lost an arm in the great cause,” he said. “No,” said the soldier with a smile. “I didn’t lose it–I gave it.” In that same way, Je...

In The Good and Beautiful God , James Bryan Smith describes a new Christian he happened to know who came to him one day feeling dejected. He was so excited to be a follower of Jesus, but he just co...

It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear, and telling me to write a new play just like it. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus a...

Ramandu’s daughter: "You can't know, you can only believe - or not."

Almighty God, who because of your great love for humanity, gave your beloved Son to die for us upon the cross: Grant us a living faith in our Redeemer, and a grateful reminder of his death. Help us to...

The content of the word “love” is given fully and exclusively in the death of Jesus on the cross; apart from this specific narrative image, the term has no meaning.

[For Christians] the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiast...

Son of God Savior Sacrifice Your love is Fierce and Forever Abounding and Intimate Generous, Goodness, and Grace Fill me with your Spirit Make me your love It is your command It is your way It is ...

Every time we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, we mean we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

The work of salvation is God’s work from beginning to end. He loved us when we were dead, and made us alive in Christ.

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

Let this be thy whole Endeavour, this thy prayer, this thy desire, that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

Grace is the wonderful spirit that imbues every fiber of our being when we practice the fruits of the spirit: kindness, patience, understanding, forgiveness, love, gentleness, fellowship and endurance...

But we must add at once that the pious will not cease from good works simply because it is impossible to gain any merit by them. Rather, the greater our faith, the more and greater our works…. For sin...

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...

Amazing grace How sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But now am found. Was blind, but now I see. Lord of all, you have called us toward a new way of life. Give...

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

Nonetheless, this singular fact, full to the bursting, remains. It is a fact grounded in infinite outpouring: Christ is in me; I am in Christ. . . . Christ in me is not some narrow, introspective, dis...

On October 13, 2010, Luis Urzua emerged into the open air after 69 days trapped over 2,000 ft underground (300 ft deeper than the height of the tallest building in the US). Luis, the shift supervisor,...

The new life is not a matter of mere moral reformation, but of spiritual transformation.