christians on Selfishness

O Merciful God, who came in Jesus Christ with saving power to a world that walked in darkness and in the shadow of death, we praise and bless you for all those your servants who helped prepare the way...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not be...

The Christian who cares only for God’s approval lives free of the tyranny of conformist pressures, relaxed under the steady direction of the God who loves us and gives himself for us. Those who try to...

The priest Henri Nouwen learned humility on a mission trip to South America. He went expecting to pass on his wisdom to the poor and unenlightened. During his six-month stay, Nouwen concluded that a d...

Context Reading Someone Else’s Mail Paul first visited the city of Corinth in south-central Greece during his 2 nd missionary journey (Acts 18:1-18). Paul in 1 Corinthians is responding to a letter...

Context Reading Someone Else’s Mail Paul first visited the city of Corinth in south-central Greece during his 2 nd missionary journey (Acts 18:1-18). Paul in 1 Corinthians is responding to a letter...

A solitary Christian who thinks he can live independently of the church functions about as well as a thumb severed from its hand.

There is no such thing as an independent Christian.

In view of all that God has accomplished for his people in Christ, how should his people live? They should present themselves to God as a ‘living sacrifice’, consecrated to him. The animal sacrifices ...

Those who have to be ordered to love God usually believe that obedience involves those excluding all other loves, to the extent of hating the world, the flesh, and even the self. We therefore find amo...

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living...

There have always been Christians who are well-adjusted to greed, well-adjusted to fear, well-adjusted to bigotry. There have always ways been Christians who are maladjusted to greed, maladjusted to f...

A real Christian is an odd number, anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, ...

We may have more disagreements with nonbelievers, but our disagreements with fellow believers are more problematic and more emotionally charged.

"Psychology,” Dallas said quietly, “is the care of souls. The care of souls was once the province of the church, but the church no longer provides that care.” He paused. “The most important thing...

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

Beloved, Let us love one another; for love is of God And everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this God’s lov...

The United States retains a basic respect for religion though it may be following European trends: surveys show a steady rise in the “nones” (now one-third of those under the age of thirty), that is, ...

A true Christian is both a beggar and an heir.

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? . . . The point is that he felt huma...

Truth-oriented Christians love studying Scripture and theology. But sometimes they’re quick to judge and slow to forgive. They’re strong on truth, weak on grace. Grace-oriented Christians love forgive...

Pastor: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and i...

If a CEO or an accountant is caught in an adulterous affair, it is not likely to make the news at all. But when a pastor is caught in an affair or embezzling money, it is a big deal. Which leads us to...

Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that is, from the time we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church … Our membe...

To just read the Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins— is this passionate, wholehearted love for God?

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insi...

The fourth-century emperor Julian (AD 331-336) feared [Christians] might take over the empire. Referring to Christians as “Galileans” and Christianity as “atheism” (because of their denial of the exis...