faith on Excitement

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it…Taking your children to school and ki...

In April 1988 the evening news reported on a photographer who was a skydiver. He had jumped from a plane along with numerous other skydivers and filmed the group as they fell and opened their parachut...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

Pastor: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, People: and kindle in us the fire of your love. Alleluia. Pastor: Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust i...

Awe encourages us to think of God as a transcendent presence: someone outside and beyond our own small concerns and our own vulnerable lives. Awe opens us up to the possibility of living always on the...

Pastor: The Lord bless you and keep you strong in resurrection faith. The Lord make His face shine on you and graciously let Easter joy dawn within you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you...

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 ...

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.

May God make you “worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire of goodness and work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the g...

Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh, and ha...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regretted volubly admiring the beauty of Herod the Great’s temple. I can see Pete...

Pastor: Arise, shine, for your light has come,  People: and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us.   Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Go out into t...

Courage is Fear That has said its prayers.

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

The Word of the LORD is true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. As we turn to your Scripture, s...

Pastor: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: Alleluia! Christ is risen! People: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!  Pastor: ...

Advent 2023: Make some noise Alive, Awake, and Alert AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regre...

“The Prince of Preachers”, Charles Haddon Spurgeon once shared a thoughtful analogy for the life of prayer in most people’s lives: Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above i...

Humor points to faith in that both humor and faith spring up in response to the reality of the paradox and the incongruities at the heart of human experience. But while humor responds well to the lowe...

There are so many things we do not understand⁠ So many ways we long for change and closure⁠ Help us to trust you⁠ even when the situation is desperate and out of control⁠ Help us to follow you⁠ even...

Holy God, You call us to a passionate, all-consuming faith. Yet, so frequently, we give You half-hearted obedience or distracted, leftover moments of our time. You tell us that we are the salt of the ...

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...

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

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...

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...

Draw us close, Holy Spirit, as the Scriptures are read and the Word is proclaimed. Let the word of faith be on our lips and in our hearts, and let all other words slip away. May there be one voice we ...

Pastor: Rejoice greatly, O people of Zion!   People: Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Pastor: See, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and having salvation, People: ...

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

People...think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross...You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clea...