conversion on Humor

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame became a zealous spiritualist later in life. He would often give public lectures on the subject. At one such meeting, he gestured enthusiastically while...

Will it increase a man’s happiness to be converted? . . . [People] have a secret, lurking fear, that if they are converted they must become melancholy, miserable, and low-spirited. Conversion and a so...

To see sin without grace is despair. To see grace without sin is arrogance. To see them in tandem is conversion.

Inexpressible Things This chapter of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence is rich indeed, revealing so much about Paul and his relationship to the Corinthian church, a church which he himself founded. Bu...

W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, who grew up in England but who spent some of his life in the United States. In November 1939 he found himself in a German-language movie th...

This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide Road Trips II . For more Summer Settings sermon guides, click below. Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered A...

Only with “gentleness and reverence” will people be able to see, verify, and be persuaded to respond to what we have to say.

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. A...

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Wormwood instructs his apprentice Screwtape to build on the doubts that often occur once the initial spiritual and emo...

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

I assert without hesitation, that the conversion described in Scripture is a happy thing and not a miserable one, and that if converted persons are not happy, the fault must be in themselves. . . . I ...

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

[In the middle of the twentieth century a] young Russian communist went to a meeting one night where he heard a Christian expounding his faith. The communist was angry. How could anyone still believe ...

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has t...

Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; ...

It was on November 28, 1965, that fighter pilot Howard Rutledge’s plane was shot down right into the hands of the North Vietnam Army. Quickly he was shuttled to the “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of the noto...

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when ...

Introduction This is a well-known passage full of well-known phrases, and yet reading and meditating on the text continues to offer fresh understandings and applications. John 3:1-17 is the account o...

People often mistake their imagination for their heart, & so often are convinced they are converted as soon as they start thinking of becoming converted.

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covena...

Preaching Commentary Introduction This is a well-known passage full of well-known phrases, and yet reading and meditating on the text continues to offer fresh understandings and applications. John ...

We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear-and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong,...

The opportunity for conversion is brief, and our lives are littered with missed opportunities.

Faith means to be apprehended by that which is not ourselves, to be seized by God.

Can the west be converted?