faith and work on Free Will

The atheist author Richard Dawkins, who wrote, “The universe, at the bottom, has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor care...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...

I once was significantly lost. When I was a college student in northern Wisconsin, my dad and I were hiking on a trail that was somewhat familiar to me. I had been on this trail just a few weeks befor...

Hark! the voice of Jesus crying, “Who will go and work today? Fields are white and harvests waiting, Who will bear the sheaves away?” Loud and long the Master calls us, Rich reward he offers free; ...

A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

O God, Father of us all, we praise you for so binding humanity together that we must each lean upon the strength and labor of others. We ask your blessing on all men and women who have worked to build...

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

If you think of your identity and heart as an engine, you could say there is a kind of fuel that powers it cleanly and efficiently—and a kind of fuel that is not only polluting but also destroys the e...

In 2010, an oil rig named “Deepwater Horizon” suffered a catastrophic failure. Due to improper installation of the cement seal, a malfunctioning blowout preventer, and cost-cutting decisions by corpor...

Almighty and most merciful Father, giver of every good and perfect gift, we give you thanks for blessing us so richly with your good Word and the holy Sacraments, and supplying so abundantly all our d...

Ignoring God's Stop Sign Have you ever been driving and inadvertently blown right through a stop sign?  It happened to me recently. Anne and I were down in San Francisco meeting some friends, I w...

I might not be the best person to be writing this.  After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...

Stop for one whole day every week, and you will remember what it means to be created in the image of God, who rested on the seventh day not from weariness but from complete freedom. The clear promise ...

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a true...

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

The command to celebrate the Sabbath, and therefore to cease and abstain from all our own knowledge, work and volition, even from all our arbitrary surrenders and inactivity, from all arbitrary quiesc...

God has not promised to bless our good motives, dreams, and innovation. He has promised to bless his plan; that plan is that disciples make other disciples—everything else is a sideshow.

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life wil...

Unless God begins to move in my heart - and my wallet, my schedule and my to do list - I’ll never receive His best for me.

Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are unable to do all the work that you wish for us to do. We are held back by our own desires and our own apprehensions. We know that you make us bearers of your im...

Within thy circling power I stand; On every side I find thy hand; Awake, asleep, at home, abroad, I am surrounded still with God. …O may these thoughts possess my breast, Where'er I rove...

Hope remains possible even amid our failures—whether we disappoint God, let down our families, or fall short of our own expectations—because divine compassion operates like an inexhaustible well. Each...

If we want to be spiritual, then let us first of all live out lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrac...

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

Noteworthy in this regard is the contribution of the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, though John Calvin’s contribution is also very significant. Both called for a spirituality in the world that...