character on Names of God

There are no vowels in the Hebrew (YHWH), which makes it impossible to know exactly what the word is. Some old translations say ‘Jehovah’. Modern scholars tend to speak of ‘Yahweh’. When the word appe...

Preaching commentary The Law The ambiguous place of the law in Christian thought can be seen historically in battles between antinomians and legalists, each side finding New Testament support, and ...

The Law The ambiguous place of the law in Christian thought can be seen historically in battles between antinomians and legalists, each side finding New Testament support, and the present text would ...

Lord God, we come to adore you. You are the ground of all that is. You hold us in being, and without you we could not be. Before we were born, before time began, before the universe came into being, ...

What’s at Stake in Worship? Everything. that’s what's at stake in worship. The urgent, indeed troubling, message of Scripture is that everything that matters is at stake in worship. Worship names ...

Prayer of Adoration Lord—you’re sufficient in everything. You can create without us; save without our assistance; bring good out of evil, hope from despair and restore what we mess up. You’re soverei...

God exists (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 1:19). 2. God is uncreated (Acts 17:24). 3. God is Creator (Acts 14:15). 4. God is Sustainer (Acts 14:16; 17:25). 5. God is universal Lord (Acts 17:24). 6. God is self-suffi...

Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in h...

God of power, love and wisdom: you’ve known us and loved us from before we even were, and extended your grace to us before we knew your name. You save us from ourselves – from our arrogance, rebell...

God is the eternal, independent, and self-existing Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence; he who is absolute dominion; the most pure, the...

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary And his understanding no one can fathom. He gives st...

God is the I AM that I AM not the I AM that we wish.

He [God] has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners.

Leader: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. All: Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Leader: The LORD...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

Preaching Commentary The farther you go…the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it’s easy to fall off. —Anderson Cooper, Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and ...

Prayer of Adoration Good and Gracious Lord, You hold us in the palm of Your strong hand, working all things for our good and to Your glory. There is no place we can go that escapes your notice and i...

Lord – We come this morning at the start of another week to worship You, our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end. You guided, protected, strengthened and blessed us this past week – for which we t...

The majesty of God Cannot be measured By human instruments, Cannot be constrained Within human boundaries, Cannot be contained Within human vessels, Cannot be explained By human thought, Cann...

In the Old Testament, God is often praised for his kindness. There is a beautiful word in Hebrew— hesed —which is so rich in meaning that it gets translated in many ways. Very often it is translat...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and com...

Holy and gracious God, may your Holy Spirit give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know the hope to which Christ has called us, the riches ...

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the...

Leader: We give you thanks, O Lord, with all our hearts; People: On the day we called, you answered us; our strength of soul you increased. Leader: For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowl...

The fire that burns and does not burn out, which has no tendency to destruction in its very energy, and is not consumed by its own activity, is surely a symbol of the One Being, whose being derives it...

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all ...

Our God is not made of stone. His heart is the most sensitive and tender of all. No act goes unnoticed, no matter how insignificant or small. A cup of cold water is enough to put tears in the eyes of ...

My friend and colleague Keas Keasler, who teaches a class on spiritual formation, recently asked the class to close their eyes and picture God. After a few moments he had them open their eyes and, if ...

preaching commentary A Tough Way to Start Ministry You don’t have to spend much time on Twitter or Facebook to be reminded that schadenfreude (taking joy from another's misfortune) is alive a...