Psalm 139:7-10, Romans 8:38-39, Matthew 11:28-30, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 40:31, Luke 10:25-37, John 11:32-35
God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: You are always and forever for us: We can’t run away from Your presence; nor out-sin Your amazing grace and forgiveness. We can’t exhaust Your unconditional love nor ...
Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...
Psalm 121:7-8, Romans 8:38-39, John 10:28-29, Psalm 91:14-15, Isaiah 41:10
Davon Huss tells the story of a boy who came home one hot afternoon, anxious to take a cool swim in the pond behind his home. He lived in south Florida, so taking a quick dip was a common way to cool ...
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...
I believe that it is the paradox between serving a healing God and the persistence of illness and even death that ultimately lies behind most theological debates about divine healing in the Church. ...
Isaiah 61:3, John 11:32-35, Romans 8:28, Genesis 37:50, James 1:17, Romans 6:23 , 1 Corinthians 12:28
A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particu...
We probably got a bit too cocky about how well our lives were going. But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. ...
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...
John 16:33, Revelation 21:4, Matthew 5:4, Lamentations 3:22-23, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Isaiah 53:4-5, Romans 8:18
Gracious God, I am reminded today of the horrible pain that sin causes. How many lives are destroyed by sin? How many families rent apart? How many parents overcome with grief? And this is just the be...
1 Peter 1:6-7, Habakkuk 1:2-3, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Isaiah 53:3, Psalm 22:1, Romans 8:18
In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...
I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.
James 1:2-4, Psalm 147:3, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:28, Psalm 34:18
In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...
Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...
Walker Percy wrote six novels in which he made us insiders to the spiritual disease of alienation that he found pervasive in American culture. His name for the condition is “lost in the cosmos.” We do...
Hebrews 4:15, Hebrews 5:7-9, Isaiah 53:1-12, 1 Peter 4:1, 1 Peter 3:18, Matthew 27:57-75, Matthew 28:, Mark 14:43-65, Mark 15:, Luke 23:26-56, John 19:1-37, 1 Peter 2:24, Romans 8:3
A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely ...
1 Corinthians 13:5, Genesis 45:1-15, John 8:1-11, John 21:15-19, Luke 15:11-32, Isaiah 49:16, Romans 8:1
Love keeps no record of wrongs. We keep to-do lists so we don’t forget We check them twice We carry them in our pockets Holding on to the pain The disappointment The failure Re-viewing the wrong Poi...
In Christ as sacrifice, God our judge is judged in our place, reveals our perpetration of and collaboration with sin, ends our rebellion, forgives our guilt, cleanses us, makes us righteous, and estab...
Galatians 5:17, 1 Peter 2:25, Romans 8:7, James 4:4, Ephesians 2:1-2, Isaiah 59:2, 1 John 3:4
In the New Testament sin is not merely an individual, privatized transgression of a moral standard (sins is typically used for specific transgressions). It is far more radical than that. Sin is a mist...
Hebrews 12:2, John 17:5, Romans 8:3, Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 2:14-15
To achieve the divine purpose of becoming the Savior, the divine glory needed to be veiled. Christ voluntarily, moment by moment, submitted to human limitations apart from sin. The humiliation was tem...
Philippians 4:6-7, Revelation 21:4, Romans 8:37-39, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Matthew 11:28-30
Victorious Christ Our Sovereign and Savior We cry out for your saving power Reveal your healing and wholeness In our sickness, our suffering Our lamenting, our loss Reveal your healing and wholeness...
In her beautifully written memoir Unafraid, Susie Davis reflects on fear after experiencing a school-shooting as a high-school student. It was after this that Davis began to experience regular bouts o...
Matthew 28:20, John 10:11-18, Romans 8:31-39, Psalm 16:8, John 14:6, Colossians 1:27
Christ, be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ where I lie, Christ when I sit, Christ where I ...
Mark 14:10, Romans 8:32, Matthew 27:1-2, Luke 23:1-3, John 19:16
I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...
2 Timothy 2:12, James 1:2-4, Matthew 5:11-12, Philippians 1:29, Romans 8:18, 2 Corinthians 4:17, John 15:20
Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...
Revelation 21:4, Psalm 34:18, Psalm 147:3, 1 Peter 4:12-19, John 16:33, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 1 Peter 5:10, Romans 5:3-5, Romans 8:28
Books on the problem of pain divide neatly into two groupings. The older ones, by people like Aquinas, Bunyan, Donne, Luther, Calvin, and Augustine, ungrudgingly accept pain and suffering as God’s use...
Fear is a “mighty wind” indeed. The wreckage left by the toxic wind of fear is evident everywhere. We are afraid of the unknown, afraid of one another, afraid of poor health, afraid of death, and afra...