acceptance on God's Protection

Gracious God–who opens Your arms wide to welcome us just as we are but who’s too loving leave us that way: in response to Your invitation we come humbly and boldly with our broken hearts and weak hand...

God of grace and glory, compassion and power—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You meet us right where we are at—not asking us to put on any masks, false fronts or airs. You love us just as we are while a...

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Prize Fight Paul pulls no punches in this letter to the church of Ephesus. It is an onslaught of theological intensity from the first ring of the bell. Like a prize figh...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The Samaritan Woman in a Male-Defined World In the ancient world, your place as a woman was defined by your connection to a man: Father...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The Samaritan Woman in a Male-Defined World In the ancient world, your place as a woman was defined by your connection...

God of Grace and Power—our Friend, who sticks closer than a brother: You know when we screw up ...and You know when we manage to get it right. You know when we forget you ... but You never forget us. ...

Our God, you love us unconditionally and with great sacrifice, yet we reject your love in search of another love other desires. We have make harmful decisions while on this search rather than acceptin...

If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.

The Word of God is clear, it is not that we have accepted God; rather He has accepted us… [Yet many Christians] actually think that they accepted God, and therefore it is only natural for them to thin...

Preaching Commentary Leaving Home I moved away from my hometown for graduate school when I was just shy of 30. I never went back. When I struck out from home, I lived in cities larger and more dive...

I don’t know what I did wrong. But he had that “calmer than calm” look that hid a rage inside. I picked up the phone and saw her name. Not now. I can’t handle her right now. I scanned the room, lookin...

God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day...

One saint used to say that she was the type of woman who advances more rapidly when she is drawn by love than when driven by fear. She was perceptive enough to know that we are all that type of person...

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

Pastor: O people, return to the Holy One your God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. All: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. ...

The secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are... and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this.

Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...

We may say that in the possession of the Spirit we who are in Christ have a foretaste of the blessings of the age to come, and a pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of the body. Yet we have only ...

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

A blessing for the courage to try Blessed are you, faced with the impossible.  You who do not take your eyes away  from what threatens to swallow you whole.  You who stare down reality,  tho...

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...

It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with t...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Historical Clue The superscript of Psalm 51 gives us a historical clue about the composition of this Psalm, “A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophe...

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God ...

Patti and Bruce, feeling a tug from Jesus, welcomed a four-year-old foster child into their home. Originally the child welfare organization told them Jonathan would be staying with them and their four...

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

One of the ways we reflect God's love and bring him glory is to accept each other just as he accepts us. This means we accept others' quirks and look past their faults in order to see a person...

I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know...

Lisa Sharon Harper shares a powerful testimony in her book, The Very Good Gospel. Her story is that she grew up the child of a single mother after her parents divorced. After the divorce she and her ...

To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.