The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Psalm 27 is one of my primary go-to passages when I can’t see past the chaos and need encouragement.
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“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 22-23).
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Christianity in the Long Run
Acts 6:31 tells us “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” At that point of belief through which we enter into Salvation, we are redeemed, adopted, and sanctified. Our lives don’t freeze in that moment. Except in the case of eleventh-hour deathbed conversions, we generally aren’t carried to Heaven in that moment. We continue to live on this earth…..
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Forever
When I was ten years old, my fifth grade teacher asked the class what we thought we would be like or be doing at the turn of the century. The purpose of the exercise was her philosophy that, having lived a full decade, we should know what we wanted to do as adults and focus on that for the rest of our academic careers. When I thought…..
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Earth Takes a Sabbath
As the earth begins to wind down for winter, it is a good time to, once again, remember the Creator and rejoice in the work of His hands. We see the amazing colors that precede the Sabbath rest of creation – the gold, scarlet, orange, and brown leaves preparing to fall, bequeathed to the ground to nourish next year’s growth, and the trees primed…..
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Come
Isaiah is a book of prophecy that primarily targets the people of Israel. But chapters fifty-three through sixty-one diverge into the prophetic advent of salvation free to all who believe in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ on the cross. One part of that prophecy uses the imperative voice of command as God calls everyone to Come (Isa. 55:1), Listen Diligently (vs. 2b), Hear (vs.3), and Seek Him…..
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The Potter, Part 2
The biblical allegory of the potter and the clay appears numerous times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Last week we explored most of the Old Testament incidents in which faithless Israel is warned of the coming judgement in the form of the Babylonian captivity (Isa. 41:25), explanation of Israel’s required repentance and recognition of absolute dependence and faith in God’s…..
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The Potter, Part 1
I once took a pottery class at our local community college where I learned about hand-thrown, wheel-thrown, and tooling techniques for work with clay. I also employed several glazing and firing techniques during my class. While I didn’t have to create the clay myself, I did do some clay amendment to recycle my badly made pots. It involved a lot of time under water…..
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A Template for Prayer
Parts of David’s prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Chronicles. 16:8-36 for the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem are woven into several of the Psalms (with minor variations in Psalm 47, 48, 96, 105, and 106). Its antiquity, Old Testament placement, and focus on Israel’s history does not rule out its use in our own prayers. In five parts it gives…..
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Holy Spirit Calling
Friends of mine celebrated their fifty-eighth wedding anniversary this week. They have been missionaries their entire life together. They served in France for a number of years working with a variety of evangelistic efforts alongside local churches, including literature distribution, special evangelistic events, and a Christian Coffee House. After that, they lived in the United States and worked as administrative personnel for a global missionary…..