background on Belonging to God

Have you ever noticed how closely the words longing and belonging are connected? I’m not sure of their exact etymology, but I do believe that our deepest longing in life is to be-...

The astonishing good news that the Bible gives… is that God has a personal will for each of us. Because we find this truth so hard to learn by heart, we need to hear it repeatedly. So let me repeat it...

There are at least ten God-created longings of the soul:  1. To see my body as sacred  2. To be wanted, desired  3. To be loved without condition  4. To be intimately connected to God  5. T...

The apostle Paul said, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on thin...

For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the...

At issue here is the question: ‘To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?’ Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, an...

The guillemot, a small Arctic seabird, nests in dense colonies on the rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic and Arctic. Thousands of these birds gather in tight spaces, with hundreds of females laying th...

Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...

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...

Despite belonging to a church where recitation of the creeds is an integral aspect of worship, I was for many years part of that group of moderns Pannenberg referenced who have wondered (sometimes sil...

Justification is a legal or forensic term, belonging to the law courts. Its opposite is condemnation. Both are the pronouncements of a judge. In a Christian context they are the alternative eschatolog...

Verb two: God chose. “Just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” (Eph.1:4) Everybody I have ever become acquainted with has a story,...

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

Lisa Sharon Harper shares a powerful testimony in her book, The Very Good Gospel. Her story is that she grew up the child of a single mother after her parents divorced. After the divorce she and her ...

Here’s a testimony from Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel: Harper grew up as a child of a single mother. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved from Philadelphia where ...

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

To be a child of God means access. We know God is attentively listening to us and watching us. Think about what it takes to get in to see the president of the United States. Only people who merit his ...

Each one of us is called to live the truth of our unrepeatable uniqueness. We are not meant to model ourselves after others, however wonderful they may be. A delightful Jewish parable makes this point...

Elisabeth Elliot once stayed in the farmhouse of a Welsh shepherd and his family high in the mountains of North Wales. She stood watching one misty summer morning as the shepherd on horseback herded t...

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

The fact is there is nothing that we are doing that God could not raise up a stone in the field to do for him. The realization of this puts us in our true place. Though, lest we get too knocked down by...

Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that is, from the time we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church … Our membe...

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

There was what an Orthodox Hasidic rabbi had said on a flight westward. He’d put his prayer shawl in the overhead compartment and sat down, sweeping aside the tassels dangling from his pockets. And so...

When people are asked what they believe in, they give, not merely different answers, but different sorts of answers. Someone might say, “I believe in UFOs”—that means, I think UFOs are real. “I believ...

It is recognizing one’s nothingness, expecting everything from the good God, just as a little child expects everything from its father; it is not getting anxious about anything, not trying to make one...

It is helpful to understand the call of God in three distinct ways. First, there is the call to be a Christian. The God of creation invites us to respond to his love. This call comes through Jesus, wh...

God wants to feed his people. In keeping the one tree from them, God protected Adam and Eve. When they broke table fellowship with God, they suspected that God was withholding something good, that thi...

Blessing in the ancient world was the highest form of well-being possible for human beings. The Greeks referred to the blissful existence of the gods as “blessed.” For Israel, blessing included not ju...

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot...