Romans 12:20-21, Matthew 5:44, James 2:1, Proverbs 16:7, Ephesians 2:14-16
I was driving in Columbus, Ohio, when I came upon a hitchhiker who alternated between holding his thumb out and clasping his hands together as if he were praying. I picked him up. His name was Mike, a...
Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...
Mark 7:20-23, Proverbs 4:23, James 1:14-15, Luke 6:43-45, Colossians 2:23
One afternoon, I was playing with my son in our living room when I suddenly smelled something burning. I stood up and walked around, nose high in the air, sniffing furiously. My wife smelled it too, s...
Not long ago, I had a young couple come to me and say, “Pastor, we’re looking at buying a house. We’ve looked at this one house, and we really like it, but we want to make sure it’s God’s will. Would ...
A little girl once wrote a letter to an advice column in the Newspaper. In it, she tells a story about her uncle and aunt. “My uncle was the tightest man I ever met.” She said. “All his life, every ti...
Proverbs 1:5, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 11:25, James 1:21, Colossians 2:3, Matthew 18:3
Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...
Luke 10:36-37, 1 John 3:18, Hebrews 13:16, Proverbs 14:31, Matthew 22:39
If you have ever watched the President of the United States deliver the State of the Union Address in recent years, you know that at some point in his speech, he will point to the balcony and introduc...
Galatians 5:1, Numbers 14:4, Exodus 16:3, Luke 9:62, 2 Peter 2:22, Proverbs 26:11
There is a story about a farmer who had a few animals he kept in a barn that had gotten old, drafty, and leaky. Concerned for his animals' well-being, the farmer decided to build a new barn. He bu...
Proverbs 18:21, Numbers 13:31-33, Deuteronomy 1:28, James 3:5-6, Exodus 14:12
Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...
1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:12, Proverbs 4:23, Matthew 26:41, Psalm 46:10, 1 Kings 19:11-12, John 10:10
In the Critically acclaimed 2018 horror film A Quiet Place , Earth faces an alien invasion unlike any other. In the movie, the aliens behave like merciless monsters, using their lightning-fast sp...
Matthew 24:12, Hebrews 10:25, John 6:66, Proverbs 18:1, Isaiah 53:6
[R]eliable quantitative research around this has brought some helpful insights to light. Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge have released the largest study ever done on dechurching in America i...
John 6:26-27, John 6:35, Isaiah 55:1-2, Jeremiah 2:12-13, Proverbs 27:20, Amos 8:11
In The Phantom Tollbooth , there is a special kind of food called “subtraction stew.” Produced by a mathemagician, this stew makes you hungrier after you’ve eaten it. Our three main characters don’t ...
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Luke 15:11-32, Proverbs 20:29, Psalm 90:10-12
Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment ( Thou shalt not commit adultery ) and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth comma...
Malachi 3:2-3, 1 Peter 1:6-7, Proverbs 17:3, Psalm 66:10-12, Isaiah 48:10, John 15:1-2
The human soul is like a fine wine that needs to ferment in various barrels as it ages and mellows. The wisdom for this is written everywhere, in nature, in scripture, in spiritual traditions, and in ...
Matthew 6:28-29, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 31:30, Romans 1:25
Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...
Matthew 7:7-8, Proverbs 27:17, Luke 15:4-7, Luke 19:10
The second lesson this group of new believers has shown us is that the postmodern path to faith is organic. Lostness, of course, looks different depending upon your perspective and personality. It is ...
Proverbs 17:22, Luke 6:21, Philippians 4:4, 1 Peter 1:8, Nehemiah 8:10
Humor points to faith in that both humor and faith spring up in response to the reality of the paradox and the incongruities at the heart of human experience. But while humor responds well to the lowe...
The first type of fool in the Bible is the character that might be called the fool proper. Folly in a fallen world is obviously partly relativistic, and we are always wise to say, “Says who?” Differen...
The Hebrew word for “fool” is very close to the Hebrew for “noble,” with only one letter different, and it is sometimes only in the outcome of their lives that the people considered noble by the peopl...