And in that choice, Jesus enabled the great reversal. We, armed with our misguided power, fear, jealousy, religious fervor, ruthless expedience, dehumanization of others and justifying ourselves for the rightness of our violence killed the God who came to save us. It was the worst thing we could have done.
And it was the very thing God used to redeem us.
It seems to me it would take a great deal more faith to believe that it was possible for someone to write, with exacting detail, how his famous offspring would be executed a thousand years before it happened by chance than it would to take this as another piece of evidence that Jesus was who he said he was.
Think of it this way. It is possible to study hard and become an expert on the right technique for doing every meaningful exercise with free weights. But if you never pick up a free-weight and actually do the exercises all of your knowledge will be of no benefit to your muscles or health at all.
So what do you think might happen if you spend the 40 days of Lent this year expectantly praying these two verses every day? You would be asking God every day to help you know your heart and your anxious thoughts better and to help lead you out of any way you might be offending Him and into the way everlasting.
The point of grace is to give us imperfect people a foundation of love and acceptance that will enable us to grow into the people God intended us to be.
I believe it is of the utmost importance on this journey of faith to set realistic expectations. Expectations can be an incredibly powerful force. If your expectations for what the life of a Christian should look like are out of touch with the reality of what spiritual development is actually like, it can serve as […]
Matthew 16:13-23 “When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” […]
In many cases, the church in the West has circumvented the process and procedures because we believe we know how to form ourselves better than God does. We go all-in on shortcuts that make it easier on us and in so doing greatly undermine the quality of the product produced.
That’s when the old familiar anxiety I haven’t felt in years rose up in me.
Almost involuntarily the cry of my heart came, picking up momentum as it tumbled out of my head.
“Pick me, Jesus. Please, please, please pick me. Not out of pity and please don’t just settle for me. Pick me because You want me on Your team, not because You’re so nice You have to take me.”
I found myself shocked and frightened, because I realized we live in a world where a soundbite from a bad sermon in the random town of Malden, Missouri (Population: 4,277 – 3 hours south of St Louis), can become FRONT PAGE NATIONAL NEWS. . .I’m concerned, because we seem to live in a culture where we have an overabundance of religiously and politically motivated rock-bearing Pharisees and a critical shortage of extravagant grace.
Lots of things can change your life forever while you are just trying to make it through your normal day. I have always remembered the story of Bobby Leech who rode over Niagara Falls in a barrel only to die from complications of slipping on an orange peel a few years later.
I believe that in the system and order of life, on this planet at least, God created the human species with a very specific purpose in mind. That purpose was to fill the specific role that is alternatively described in the Bible as steward or priest with humanity serving as a go-between between God and […]