christian living on Sin

Pastor Bob Beasley recounts this story: Our three-year-old daughter, Rena, sat with us during the baptismal service last Sunday night, which was a new experience for her. She exclaimed in surprise, ...

Thus, we must regard baptism and put it to use in such a way that we may draw strength and comfort from it when our sins or conscience oppress us, and say: ‘But I am baptized! And if I have been bapti...

In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...

In His free grace, God is for man in every respect; He surrounds man from all sides. He is man's Lord who is before him, above him, after him, and thence also with him in history, the locus of man...

Lord–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Thank You that there’s no place we can hide from Your Spirit, no place we can flee from Your presence. We can’t go beyond the reach of Your love, nor out-distance the...

For us, Jesus instituted two ongoing signs to confirm our confidence in the gospel of his grace, the first of which is baptism. Though simpler and less obviously supernatural than the ten plagues on E...

Nonetheless, this singular fact, full to the bursting, remains. It is a fact grounded in infinite outpouring: Christ is in me; I am in Christ. . . . Christ in me is not some narrow, introspective, dis...

O God, we thank you that you have not treated us as we deserve. We thank you that, though you are Creator, Judge and King, you are also Father, so that, though we are wandering children, there is alw...

‘Salvation’ is a wonderfully wide-ranging word and it would be a great mistake to think that it refers only to the forgiveness of our sins. God is as much concerned with our present and future as with...

​Living God Holy Inferno Who revealed yourself as Burning Bush Pillar of Flame Dancing Tongues of Fire Illumine your children, so we may know your will Refine your children, till our souls burn to do...

Deacon or other leader With all our heart and with all our mind, let us pray to the Lord, saying "Lord, have mercy." For the peace from above, for the loving-kindness of God, and for the ...

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p...

We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every oth...

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

The piling on of grace upon grace is incredible. God had given us his Son. We killed him. In response God says, “I want to forgive you and offer another ‘family member,’ so to speak.” It was a case of...

To focus our expectation in an otherworldly salvation has the potential to dissipate our resistance to societal evil and the dedication needed to work for the redemptive transformation of this world.

A passage often referred to in order to describe the sacrificial, countercultural quality of the early church comes to us interestingly enough, from one of its strongest critics, known later to histor...

The immortal Spirit . . . is forever tugging us toward him.

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

Our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love, for we know not how to hate; we call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint ...

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchan...

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covena...

Of Him nothing appears in visible form; He never steps out from the intangible void. Hovering, undefined, incomprehensible, He remains a mystery. He is as the wind! We hear its sound, but can not tell...

Most powerful Holy Spirit, come down upon us and subdue us. From heaven, where the ordinary is made glorious, and glory seems but ordinary, bathe us with the brilliance of Your light like dew.

In my experience, take the Holy Spirit out of the equation of your life and it spells boring. Add it into the equation of your life and you never know where you are going to go, what you are going to ...

N. T. Wright relates a story from Josephus that illustrates the meaning of "repent and believe" in the first century. Around AD 66, Josephus made a military expedition to Galilee to put dow...

From its very beginning the Bible sees human life in terms of relationships...The Bible does not speak about "humanity" but about "all the families of the earth" or "all the n...

Almighty God, we pray for your blessing on the church in this place. Here may the faithful find salvation, and the careless be awakened. Here may the doubting find faith, and the anxious be encou...