Sermon Illustrations on communion with god

Christianity at its core is not about subscription to a theological system or the authority of a sacred text or ethical perspectives, although they are all important. Christianity at its core is about...

My friend and colleague Keas Keasler, who teaches a class on spiritual formation, recently asked the class to close their eyes and picture God. After a few moments he had them open their eyes and, if ...

N.T. Wright takes some time in his book, How God Became King , to connect the idea of the logos (the eternal Word), with the idea of “dwelling,” or abiding in God’s presence: The Word became flesh ...

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation: We catch sight of a new key principle—the power of the Higher, just in so far as it is truly Higher, to come down, the power of the greater to include the less. . . . ...

Origen, in the third century, had a great analogy. He told of a village with a huge statue—so immense you couldn’t see exactly what it was supposed to represent. Finally, someone miniaturized the stat...

Christians are often accused of two wrong-headed views of the body. One is that we ignore the body in favor of a disembodied, spirits-floating-on-clouds spirituality. The other is that we are obsessed...

Famed pastor and educator A. T. Pierson (1837–1911) lamented his own human inadequacies in communicating to his congregation the depth and levels of the “unsearchable riches of Christ:” “Unsearchabl...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

A student of mine, Josiah Brown, oversees the student outreach team. He and some of our students go to youth groups to teach the youth about Christian spiritual formation. They talk about what formati...

In this beautiful poem by the English Divine John Donne, our nature as both redeemed and still sinful is eloquently described: We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s Tree, ...

Unlike most of us, Francis of Assissi's love of preaching extended beyond just human beings. On one of his journeys through the valley of Spoleto, near Bevagna, Francis of Assisi came upon a large...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel reflects on the Biblical doctrine...

The ministry of Jesus does not end with his resurrection. In his ascension, he does not abandon his humanity. He is not the ascended Lord apart from everything that has happened between his incarnatio...

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

Think of your own experiences as a human being: your body is not just a “shell” in which you dwell. Your body is not just a body. Your body is not just any body. Your body is somebody—you! Through the...

The word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word sacramentum. It was used in two ways at the time. First, it described the oath taken by soldiers in the Roman army. It was a sacred pledge of allegiance....

I don’t know what I did wrong. But he had that “calmer than calm” look that hid a rage inside. I picked up the phone and saw her name. Not now. I can’t handle her right now. I scanned the room, lookin...

In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ , British pastor and author John Stott describes the unique, upside-down kingdom instituted on the cross: ‘Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian stude...

The Cave One of the most famous passages in Plato's Republic is his "Allegory of the Cave," which is found at the beginning of book seven . Socrates imagines the human condition al...

It can be great fun to put up a tent in your backyard to play in or sleep in. Imagine what it would be like for someone else to put up a tent in your backyard and begin living there—right in your back...

It is true that he [Christ] has awful majesty; he is the great God, and is infinitely high above you; but there is this to encourage and embolden the poor sinner, that Christ is a man as well as God; ...

One of the fastest ways to learn a language is by immersion . This term can mean a few different things, but the basic idea in all of them is that you are exposed to that language in your social inte...

Aseity refers to God’s self-existence (a—from, se—oneself). God exists ‘from himself.’ God owes his existence and completeness as God to nothing outside himself. . . . God’s act of creation was not c...

The New Testament portrays Christ, the Son, as actively “sustain[ing] all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3), serving as the cohesive force of the universe. A.H. Strong expands on this idea: ...

Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ...

Without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. “Be nice to one another” is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond ...

God is the author of the physical world, and in his wisdom, he designed physical realities to convey spiritual mysteries. “There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God,” as C. S. Lewis insist...

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...

If God wanted to remain silent about His existence, He wouldn’t have bothered creating the stars; He wouldn’t have made the Milky Way, or Betelgeuse. In fact, He wouldn’t have made the majestic Rocky ...