Psalm 27:, John 8:12, Philippians 4:6-7 , Matthew 6:25-34 , Isaiah 60:19-20 , Exodus 14:13-14, Psalm 27:1-3
Leader: God is my light and my salvation; of whom should I be afraid? All: Though violence rise all around me I will not be drawn into fear. One thing I asked of God, that will I seek af...
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...
1 John 4:18, Romans 8:18, Psalm 27:1, James 1:2-3, Isaiah 26:3
In a story circulated among an ancient monastic community, a vicious warlord intimidated whole villages, sending it’s entire population into the hills to hide in caves, waiting for the ruler to move o...
Isaiah 9:2 , Malachi 4:2 , Exodus 14:19-22 , Luke 1:78-79 , John 20:1-18, Psalm 27:1
In the nighttime of our sin, the grace of God rises like the dawn. In the coldness of our hearts, hope rises like the sun. Into all that is cold and shadowed in our lives, the light of God shine...
Psychologists tell us that one of the most difficult conditions a person can be forced to bear is light deprivation. Darkness, in fact, is often used in military captivity or penal institutions to bre...
The digital age’s technological advancements boast three major contributions to the improvement of human experience, which in turn have become its undeniable values: We have access to what we want wh...
Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. People: Put on the full armor of ...
A man appears before the pearly gates. “Have you ever done anything of particular merit?” St. Peter asks. “Well, I can think of one thing….” the man offers. “Once I came upon a gang of high-testoster...
Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. People: Put on the full armor ...
Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. People: Put on the full armor of God to stand firm against the devil’s schemes. Pastor: with the belt of truth buckled at t...
John 1:1-5, Colossians 60:1, Psalm 27:1, 1 John 1:7, Ephesians 5:8
We are a people that prefer the darkness. The darkness hides that which we wish others dare not see and that which we loathe about ourselves, our twisted thoughts, perverted practices, and foolish fol...
Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...
One Sunday I was preaching on Psalm 27. It is a remarkable psalm of hope for God’s- deliverance from fear for those who have faced tough times. With the same candor found in many psalms, this one vivi...
Heavenly Father, we have forgotten your generosity and kindness. Believing you hold back from us, we have held back from others and from you. Gracious God, hear our confessions , and make us mindfu...
On February 24, 1791, Christian revivalist and pastor John Wesley penned a letter to encourage a Christian walking through some faith challenges: Unless the divine power has raised you up . . . I...
One night I went to church. They had a mass meeting. And I went to church, and they talked about how it was our right, that we could register and vote. They were talking about [how] we could vote out ...
Exodus 3:7-12 , Esther 4:12-16, Jeremiah 20:7-11, Luke 8:43-48, Mark 14:32-36, Psalm 27:13-14
A fourteenth-century definition of courage is “to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” Courage is connecting one’s heart back to one’s mind, stitching together the separated parts of ourse...
Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. People: Put on the full armor of ...
Joshua 1:9, Psalm 27:1, Ezekiel 22:30, Nehemiah 4:13-14, John 1:5, John 15:13, Romans 12:1, Isaiah 61:4
On the evening of October 15, 1940, London experienced one of the fiercest attacks of the Blitz. A total of 480 German aircraft dropped approximately 386 tons of high explosives and 70,000 incendiary ...
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...
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...
Genesis 2:18-25, Ruth 1:16-18, 1 Kings 19:9-13 , Psalm 27:4, John 20:24-29, Luke 24:13-35
If I asked you the same question I asked my patient Aaron—“What do you want?”—and you could for a moment put aside the predictable anxiety that comes with it, I’m confident that at some point in your ...
1 Kings 3:5-14 , Joshua 24:14-15 , Nehemiah 6:1-4, Matthew 6:33 , Luke 10:42, Psalm 27:4
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...
Matthew 13:43, John 1:1-14, John 8:12-20, 1 John 1:5-10, Psalm 27:, John 9:5, 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...
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...
Isaiah 26:3, Mark 6:31, Habakkuk 2:3, Psalm 27:14, Genesis 8:22
In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes one of our greatest temptations in the modern age—hurry: Hurry is a great temptation. Hurry looks like impulsive, knee-jerk reactions...
Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...