romans on Believing in Jesus

Leader: Through the grace of Christ Jesus who gave His body and shed His blood for our forgiveness, hear and believe that “he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He h...

A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc...

The faith by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us. We are not justified on account of faith; we are justified through faith. It is t...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

Preaching Commentary A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in t...

In his book, A Peculiar Glory , John Piper provides an illustration of the kind of faith we are called to. This is no “blind faith,” in which we are supposed to simply believe without using our minds...

New Testament theology is ‘inherently self-involving as it summons the reader to believe, confess, obey, and understand the entirety of one’s existence—both her or his thinking and willing—in light of...

What does it look like to incarnate the gospel in our lives? Dawn Husnick, whom Scot McKnight describes as having had some “tough years with alcohol, failed personal relationships, and depression, fou...

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Shepherd Book: “River, you don’t . . . fix the Bible. River: It’s broken. It doesn’t make sense. Shepherd Book: It’s not about . . . making sense. It’s about believing in something. And letting that b...

Gracious God, you have called us to be light in a dark world, and we have remained hidden. Thinking of ourselves first, we have withheld courage and compassion. Merciful God, hear our confessions and ...

I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden Gate Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off. I tried to dissuade him from committing suicide and told him simply that God loved him. A tear came to h...

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it...

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...

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and im...

Holy God, we confess that we have been lukewarm about living our faith in Jesus each day. We put off to tomorrow what we know in our hearts you want to happen today. We go through the motions of relig...

Faith is a how and, more specifically, a way of living in light of an event.

A number of women at Kairos Los Angeles have at times assisted a local ministry that helps women who are in transition. They provide housing and often help these women find jobs. Some of these women s...

Live out your faith this week by doing good deeds, God is with you.

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls.  We have served this god of self-preservation. But ...

We do not therefore by faith make void the law, but rather establish it.

Jesus describes his followers as being “salt” and “light” in the world in Matthew 5. When you think about salt, it doesn’t really have a whole lot of value when it’s just sitting in a salt shaker. Si...

“To what shall I liken the kingdom of God?” Jesus asked. The kingdom is manifested in ordinary daily life and how we live it. Can we accept the God of everyday life? If we can, then we can enjoy the k...

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...

God is willing to walk the earth again incarnate in us.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…. Faith, being belief that isn...

It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with t...

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace ...

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away . Rather than offering mercy, we c...

I had just finished presenting much of the material in this chapter [on the role of the Church helping the poor] to an audience in Africa. A very tall and muscular African man in the audience approach...