heaven on Failure

Hear the good news: For the joy set before him, Jesus Christ endured the shame of the cross, taking all our weakness and failure. Jesus went to the cross for the joy of having you as part of God’s Kin...

preaching commentary The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on t...

An atheist fell off a cliff. As he tumbled downward, he caught hold of the branch of a small tree. There he hung between heaven above and the rocks a thousand feet below, knowing he wasn’t going to be...

Faithful God, we confess that we have trusted our own plans instead of Yours. We have built and saved and schemed to secure our future, but we haven’t placed our trust in You. We know that Jesus told ...

Heavenly Father, we confess that our trust in you wavers and that we are fickle in our reliance.  We see you provide great things where we see little possibility; but when storms come in life, we quic...

After thirty years of being pastor, I am still amazed by the number of people who believe God is going to grade on a curve. They know they have done wrong, have mistreated others, particularly those c...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

“There is a place called heaven where the good here unfinished is made complete; and where the stories unwritten and hopes unfulfilled are continued. We shall laugh together yet.”

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves; when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little; when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lo...

Life is short, and we can accomplish only so much. Much of what we do will remain unfinished. For now. In one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Leaf by Niggle,” author J. R. R. Tolkien provid...

[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...

Because of man’s fall into sin, a curse was pronounced over the creation. God now sent His Son into this world to redeem that creation from the results of sin. The work of Christ, therefore, is not ju...

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.

Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.

Eyes of Faith Verse 17 summarizes the Apostle Paul’s argument in this passage: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Throughou...

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Near the end of his life, the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody made a striking remark: “One day soon, you will hear that I am dead. Do not believe it. I will then be alive as never before.”

Scripture’s proclivity for a new creation Some people have an aversion to describing a future day when the troubles of this world will have passed into oblivion, the kitchen-table expression being “p...

The trouble with kingdoms of heaven on earth is that they're liable to come to pass, and then their fraudulence is apparent for all to see. We need a kingdom of heaven in Heaven, if only because i...

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we ha...

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

preaching commentary Scripture’s proclivity for a new creation Some people have an aversion to describing a future day when the troubles of this world will have passed into oblivion, the kitchen-ta...

Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms...

Remember that as a faithful child of God you await promotion.

Introduction Our text falls within a larger section (Luke 16) in which Jesus deals head-on with questions of money, specifically the need to choose God over mammon (the worship of money), in other wo...

Loving God, we do not love others as you love us. We are often rude and insistent on our own way. We hold onto resentment and are then held captive by bitterness.  Bring us to repentance and help us l...

Introduction Our text falls within a larger section (Luke 16) in which Jesus deals head-on with questions of money, specifically the need to choose God over mammon (the worship of money), in other wo...

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

An ancient legend tells of a well-respected rabbi who would vanish from his synagogue for a few hours each Sabbath. His mysterious absences sparked curiosity among his students, who wondered if their ...