faith on Possibility

We should aim for rational confidence in these sorts of pursuits because certainty is a mere will-o’-the-wisp. Finite minds simply can’t pull it off. Though the distinction between aiming at certainty...

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...

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

With a graciousness and an understanding of human weakness that only God can exhibit, Jesus liberates us from alienation and self-condemnation and offers each of us a new possibility. He is the Savior...

First, most Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel ...

[M]ost Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel or li...

At the Turning Point Following Simon Peter’s climatic height of his faith, his confession that Jesus was the “Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Peter now exemplifies our humbling, human tendency t...

Context As we read the opening chapters of Mark, it becomes clear that Mark is not primarily interested in telling us things about Jesus but showing Jesus to us. We see Jesus the healer, the exor...

Context As we read the opening chapters of Mark, it becomes clear that Mark is not primarily interested in telling us things about Jesus but showing Jesus to us. We see Jesus the healer, the exor...

Many Christians are terrified of doubting their faith. We avoid questions and challenges in favor of keeping things comfortable and familiar. We worry that if we open ourselves up to the possibility o...

In Christianity faith in the Mediator is not something optional, not something about which, in the last resort, it is possible to hold different opinions, if we are only united on the ‘main point’. Fo...

Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man’s power ends.

Maybe God has given some people belief like a pier, to stand on (and God has given those people’s steadiness to the church, to me, as a reminder, as an aid), and maybe God has given others something e...

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to w...

The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given,...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Faith, thankfully, does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace.

Though God is at work, God hides… You have a choice: see God here or not; see salvation, or see only human courage; see the divine subtly at work, or see chance, luck of the draw on this day of lots.

Faith is seeing the invisible, but not the nonexistent.

Never doubt in the dark what God showed you in the light

Faith and pessimism are incompatible. To be sure, we are not starry-eyed idealists; we are down to earth realists. We know well that sin is ingrained in human nature and in human society. We are not e...

The root of our English term doubt has to do with duplicity. It is being divided or doubled up in our thinking. But this isn’t a matter of simply being confused or unable to make up our mind or ...

Unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.

Doubt is really the felt tension that exists between a belief you have and a contrary claim you do not yet believe…Simply put, doubt is that experience of one of our beliefs seeming like it might be f...

There are two golden days in the week, upon which, and about which, I never worry—two carefree days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday; Yesterday, with its ...

The only conclusion I have ever been able to reach is that we must pray God to increase our faith, a faith without which one cannot love or hope. 'Lord I believe, help though my unbelief.’

Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.