mystery on Facing your Fears

An elderly man had horrible nightmares, the same event happening over and over in his dreams. He would dream that an enormous green dragon was chasing him, and he would become frantic. Then, just abou...

Eternal God, we recognize that Your ways are mysterious. Teach us to be still and to wait for You. We confess our sinfulness, our need for control, and our discomfort with the unknown. Instead of turn...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, bec...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, because Paul’s point...

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

Save us, Glorious Christ, from every false understanding and motivation Save us from the temptation to just stay on the mountain Save us from the temptation to never engage Save us from the temptation...

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good new...

Our clawing, grasping attempts at answering every question and making sense of every mystery in life will end up in failure. Instead, God invites us to take a tour of the mad, mad world around us, to ...

Pastor: Take up the full armor of God, so that standing firm in your faith, you may go out into the world with joy and hope to make known the mystery of the Gospel, through the power of Almighty God...

Preaching Summary An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.”  The suggestion i...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

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...

Lord and God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have only begun to comprehend the wonder of the Incarnation, that you in Christ would become one of us, that you in Christ would live among us and be ...

Leader: God of promise, God of Mystery, you have sent a messenger to awaken us.        All: May the promise of your dawn awaken our hearts and minds.       May the light of your promise g...

Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God, Mysterious, Awe-Inspiring, Wonderful, One-in-Three/Three-in-One: You surprise us not with flashing lights, loud crashing noises, and constant activity. You surprise u...

When we are regularly shamed away from thoughts that venture near spirituality and transcendence, we learn to avoid it altogether, even in our thoughts. We develop a resistance to thoughts that would ...

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of i...

The final mystery is oneself.

Being fully human is to inhabit the wild mysteries of our bodies and trust that, because Christ was a body, and still is a body, we don’t need to fear this place. We can say, it is good, because Chris...

Forgive us, O God, when we limit you – When we remake you in our image, When we claim our causes as your own, When we box you in, And explain you away, And in our attempts at understanding, whittle aw...

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...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

Radiant Christ, You are Mystery You are Holy You are God Give us eyes to see you and your glory Eyes to see your sustaining and saving Eyes to see your future and your now Eyes to see and to follow. A...

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

God, our Father: Your love gives us more than we can ever hope for, and far beyond what we deserve. You clothe us in the righteousness of Christ. You give us dreams and visions of what we can become b...

Contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the ...

In 1884, an English schoolmaster named Edwin Abbott Abbott wrote a story about a two-dimensional world called Flatland, inhabited by various shapes (circles, squares, etc.). In Flatland, there is heig...

An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.”  The suggestion is that such churches...

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.