christian living on Sins

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

Leader: In Jesus Christ God has removed our sins from us and given us a new name. People: Now we are called Forgiven. Leader: In Jesus Christ God has assured us that he could never forget us. Peopl...

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has t...

When my kids were little, I used to hang piñatas from our favorite tree in the backyard as often as possible. Sometimes we did it for their birthdays, but sometimes we did it because it was Saturday, ...

Heavenly Father, forgive us when we neglect our reliance on you. We take for granted many gifts you give, but we also forget your desire to provide. Help us to receive those gifts, whether they are ph...

The Lord our God is rich in mercy, slow to anger, and abounds in steadfast love. He does not pay us back what we deserve, but even while we were his enemies he sent his son to die for us. Christ died ...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

Heavenly Father, forgive us when we try to go our own way and end up running from you. Forgive us when we shy away from the work that you want to do in our lives. Help us to be willing to go through y...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are not always able, willing, and ready to be vessels of your work. Thank you for the times that you cultivate our receptive hearts and fruitful hands. In your abun...

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...

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

Jacob Needleman has been a secular philosopher and a professor of philosophy of religion for many years at San Francisco State University. Some years ago he wrote a remarkable book called Why Can’t We...

Challenges to holiness without mention of grace force a human-centered religion. After all, people cannot do what they are told to do apart from Christ’s grace. That’s John 15:5, right? “Apart from me...

We bring before God those times when God’s Kingdom and love have not shaped our lives, asking to be forgiven and made new. Lord Jesus, too often this week you have only been a small part of our live...

Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit.

If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road - abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To tha...

We can't save ourselves by pulling on our bootstraps, even when the bootstraps are made of the finest religious leather.

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

The needed change within us is God's work, not ours. The demand is for an inside job, and only God can work from the inside. We cannot attain or earn this righteousness of the kingdom of God: it i...

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

Jesus, You call us from what we know to something new From a life on this sea with this family From the nets of generations before us You call us to a new beginning A new being and doing You call us ...

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear tr...

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...

If we give God service it must be because He gives us grace. We work for Him because He works in us.

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

This impotence of “systems” is a main reason why Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today, which always strongly convey some elements of a human ...

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...