government and politics on Surrender

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.

A World in Chaos At the risk of sounding dramatic, both the U.S. and the world seem to be reaching a level of chaos unmatched since 9/11. The confusion and shifting loyalties, not to mention the 26,0...

If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; n...

In his book, The Word and Power Church, Doug Banister writes: The spring of 1940 found Hitler’s panzer divisions mopping up French troops and preparing for a siege of Great Britain. The Dutch had al...

It was the Fall of 1914. This war was different from those that had come before. The invention of the machine gun, as well as other high-powered weapons, meant that armies could no longer charge thei...

In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking intentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own des...

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other...

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...

I choose gentleness... Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only o...

Heavenly Father We confess before you and before one another that we do not always trust your goodness. We are worried about losing control of our lives, and we are scared of what taking up our cros...

Lord Jesus Christ, strip us of all false notions of power. Teach us to love the world as you love it, with a generous share of selfless compassion—the foundation for true power. Amen.

Holy God, to Your grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it; prone to leave the God I l...

Luther's stand at the Diet of Worms is legendary. Having written blistering indictments of the abuses of the Catholic church and theological treatises which challenged its teachings, Luther was su...

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

Break our hearts, Jesus That we may weep as You weep Love as You love Break our hearts Jesus and raise our voices that we may speak and act so all may be safe so all may have opportunity so all may k...

Dear Christ, hasten to me. Release me from my sins. Free my arms from the chains of evil, that I may embrace you. Lift the scales of ignorance from my eyes, that I may see you. Why do you delay? What ...

When we allow darkness to overcome the light, forgive us, Lord. When we reduce Christmas to plastic and tinsel, have mercy on us, Father. When hardness of heart keeps us from seeing and hearing an...

James 5:16 invites us to confess our sins so that we might be healed. Let us go before our Creator in humility and confession. Lord Almighty, we come to you in humility today. We have sought security...

Pastor: Heavenly Father, this morning as we worship in your presence, my mind settles on the fact that I have blown it. I’ve disobeyed your commandments, I’ve sinned so many times, and I have not love...

If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: "God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entan...

Merciful Jesus Give us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety in order to take up the cross of opportunity and justice Too often we fail to do this Merciful Jesus Give us courage to d...

O God, from whom to be turned is to fall, to whom to be turned is to rise, and with whom to stand is to abide for ever; grant us in all our duties your help, in all our perplexities your guidance,...

Merciful and Holy God, We bow before You in heartfelt confession, acknowledging that we are a broken people, living in a broken world. This world is dark with the stain of sin. Your design for creatio...

Gracious God, you shower us with so many blessings, yet we struggle to share them with others. You love a cheerful giver, but we sometimes give grudgingly. We forget that all we have is yours, and tha...

Almighty God, you are king of everything. You are Lord of our lives. You control the stars in heavens. And you humbled yourself to be a servant to us. In response to this, we continue to reign as king...

Gracious God, we don’t live as Christ did. Although You give us specific instructions for an ordered way of life that stands out from the rest of the world, we settle for lukewarm Christianity. Our li...

On a TV detective show some years ago I saw a story of an old man in his eighties, an ex-Marine, sadly broken down and accused of a crime. Two big, strapping military police and a snarling Navy lawyer...

"All these I will give you..." One of the three diabolical tests of Jesus in the Judean wilderness is the “temptation to be powerful” as Henri Nouwen puts it in his 1989 reflection on Chris...

Pastor: God our Redeemer, you have saved your people through Jesus Christ, your Son. You have delivered your people out of slavery to sin and have freed us into new life. Yet, we still wander through ...