faith in action on Hearts

When the Bible uses the term heart , it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situati...

Pastor: Heavenly Father, You have commanded us to love You above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. By Your Holy Spirit, mold and shape us into the image of Your Son, for we desire to look, ...

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

A fourteenth-century definition of courage is “to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” Courage is connecting one’s heart back to one’s mind, stitching together the separated parts of ourse...

The power of love is in the sacrifice and commitment it requires. Sacrifice and commitment always travel with love and action. Love looks like showing up with hands to help even when we don’t know wha...

The Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its...

Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in 'religion' mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.... When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making ...

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

We are the Bibles the world is reading; We are the creeds the world is needing; We are the sermons the world is heeding.

The dangers and hardships for the faithful are real indeed. Truth is tested and faith is confirmed not in idle speculation but in the crucible of adversity. Those who wish to find a more vibrant relig...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.

Faith is the gift of God. So is the air, but you have to breathe it; so is bread, but you have to eat it; so is water, but you have to drink it.

Recently we found ourselves around a table with a team of faith leaders from an influential Midwestern church. Their restlessness was palpable. “Peace has been one of our core values for years,” they ...

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Faithfulness in small things is a big thing to God.

It's ironic that most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those i...

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yours...

If birds could write books, their story of creation would no doubt read quite differently than ours. In the first place, I expect they would make quite a lot out of that wind of God that swept over th...

What do you want to achieve? Greater riches? Cheaper chicken? A happier life, a longer life? Is it power over your neighbors that you are after? Are you only running away from your death? Or are you s...

Note: This was originally part of a guide for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Year B) , which includes Job 38:1-11 and Mark 4:35-11 . I have adapted the discussion of each of these t...

I’m looking for a second reformation. The first reformation of the church 500 years ago was about beliefs. This one is going to be about deeds. It is not going to be about what the church believes, bu...

For grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.

Tolstoy’s tale "The Two Pilgrims" describes two Russians on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, eager to attend the solemn Easter festivities. One pilgrim was so focused on reaching the destination t...

Road Trips in Scripture While the definitions of “oceans” and “lakes” had to be qualified a bit in order to relate biblical locations to our present-day vacations, road trips—like mountains—can be fo...

On Christmas Eve in Tehran, house-church pastor Farshid Fatah and his family were awakened to the frightening sounds of the Iranian security police pounding at their door. After the police searched hi...

I grew up in a church where healing never happened. We had theology that Jesus healed, but I never saw anyone healed growing up in the church. One day, I’m a pastor, and I decide we have to move beyon...

A piano sits in a room, gathering dust. It is full of the music of the masters, but in order for such strains to flow from it, fingers must strike the keys… trained fingers, representing endless hours...

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pervasive sense of societal malaise seems to be affecting a significant portion of the population. Journalist and managing editor of Time , Lily Rothman, ...