christian living on Refugees

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might be even more difficult...

All who are called to salvation are called to discipleship, no exceptions, no excuses!

Family and property, then, were not for the ancient Jew simply what they are to the modern western world. Both carried religious and cultural significance far beyond personal, let alone “individual,” ...

You are our strength, Lord, we will love you, under the shadow of your wings, protect us. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us, that you may open the eyes of our hearts. We shall call to you with the...

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...

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 ...

Father, as adults, we can fool ourselves into being quite self-sufficient. Yet, You have called us to be precariously dependent upon You. When we see how Jesus welcomes the little children, we can als...

Savior Jesus, we confess that all too often we are incapable of looking beyond our own ambitions. We get wrapped up in prestige and position, leaving you behind for our own aspirations. Forgive our mi...

Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...

Hence, whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.

In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ , British pastor and author John Stott describes the unique, upside-down kingdom instituted on the cross: ‘Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian stude...

Lord—You’re the God who notices. You notice a desperate woman who touches Your garments in a crowd. You notice a lonely, little tax-collector in a tree. You notice a blind man on the roadside, a widow...

One of the best stories of humility is that of a man who arrived in 1953 at the Chicago railroad station to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He stepped off the train, a tall man with bushy hair and a bi...

If we minimize grace, the world sees no hope for salvation. If we minimize truth, the world sees no need for salvation.

If you are ready to partake of grace you have not to atone for your sins--you have merely to accept of the atonement. All that you want to do is to cry, "God have mercy upon me," and you wil...

Jesus, we bless you and honor you for your unending mercy, a flood of grace, pouring out and spilling over. We receive your mercy. We receive your blessings and pray for the Holy Spirit to make them r...

I am struck by all the things Jesus didn’t say or do in response to the litanies of pain and defensiveness he heard from people. Jesus didn’t say to the man, “You sound like a victim to me; what are y...

It is possible also to come at Christianity from a rather different point of view as well, seeing it as something not too difficult but too simple for us, too basic, something to be apprehended theref...

O Jesus Christ, who fed the multitudes upon the hillside, feed us now with your Word, that we too may be filled. Amen. God of truth, who desires that we live by your truth, may the words spoken this d...

May we ask according to your will, not according to our desires, for you will give us what is right for us. May we seek you as the pearl of great price, not half-heartedly but with our whole being, fo...

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

Faith’s only function is to receive what grace offers.

I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through....

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 ...

The Swiss-German novelist Hermann Hesse published a short story in 1932 called "Journey to the East." In it, a group of men go on a long journey. Throughout their trip, they are accompanied ...

Following Dallas Willard’s line of thinking in  The Divine Conspiracy , we don’t believe Jesus is saying, “Be merciful and you will be blessed.” Rather, his idea is, “As a tender-hearted person you ge...

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

Billy Graham had a weekly radio show titled The Hour of Decision. Normally it was a tape recording of the service and message he’d given at a recent evangelistic rally. And at the conclusion of every ...

Gracious God, your Son Jesus came not be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. He is our Good Shepherd, whose leadership is less about the love of power, and more about the ...