bible and theology on Comeback

We all love a good comeback story. In such tales, the young upstart rises like a meteor, fails big, then fights back against the odds to win the victory. Tech whiz Steve Jobs was like that. After prod...

What is the difference between people who thrive and people who decline over a long period of time? It’s not that they don’t get knocked down; it’s that they bounce back up. Every successful person I ...

its simplest form, the term “missional” is the noun “missionary” modified to be an adjective. Missional churches do what missionaries do, regardless of the context. They can parachute-drop into a vill...

Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agricu...

Redemption is a recovering and restoring of the original. The person who experiences redemption in Christ remains the same person, even though the transformation from the sinner dead-in-sins to the sa...

Leader: Turn us again, O God; People: Let your face shine, that we may be saved! Leader: Turn us again, O God of hosts. People: Let your face shine, that we may be saved! Leader: Give us life,...

If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.

The acknowledgment of our weakness is the first step in repairing our loss.

Returning from the wilderness [a man] becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forebears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his succes...

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today ...

I greeted repentance like a ship on the horizon of the future and believed I could sovereignly determine its anchoring. But the prodigal return came earlier than projected.

ONE VOICE: Joel 2:13 Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful ALL: We drift away from our true home We forget we are Your beloved We forget we are not God Rend our hearts, O Go...

O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants! Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladne...

I think redemption is about righting a wrong, and in that pursuit it's about trying. You can stumble, you can make mistakes, but it's about trying to do the right thing.

Sadly, the need for recovery is often viewed as evidence of weakness rather than an integral aspect of sustained performance. The result is what we give almost no attention to renewing and expanding o...

The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

"When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about."

Sometimes our successes can be more devastating than our failures. We fight, strain, and struggle in pursuit of something or someone that looks to be good, and after days or months or years, we obtain...

Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved! You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see;...

Our gracious God, you repeatedly move towards us, even when we pull away. You are not deterred by our rejection of you nor our running from you. Your love is persistent. We confess our distrust of you...

If you could reduce the gospel to one word, most scholars would choose metanoia—the Greek word translated “repentance” in the New Testament… Most of the time we translate both “meta-noeo” and “meta-no...

Father, we thank you that you are a God who provides second chances. You called us to go and we ran. We ran as far from your presence as possible. You pursued us in our abandonment of your call. Like ...

People by nature build, tear down, and rebuild. We build our hopes, get disappointed, and then search for renewed hope.

When the LORD restored the fortunes of _______, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the people, "The ...

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

Leader: The good news is that Christ calls us to new life and enables us to begin again and again and again and again. Leader: Friends, believe the good news of the gospel. People: In Jesus Christ we...

Prayer of Confession Jesus explains in the parable of the Prodigal Son that the Father comes running to the son when he returns. God eagerly awaits our repentance and celebrates when we return to him...

J. R. R. Tolkien coined the term "eucatastrophe" to refer to the unexpected happy ending at the end of a fairy tale, achieved by grace rather than effort. The consolation of fairy-stories,...

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart Could have recovered greenness?