Encouragement

Encouragement

Harvest Talk for Harvest’s People

In John 4:35-36 Jesus said, “Look! I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.” What is the first thing Jesus asks us to do here? What does He hope His disciples will “see”? Who is the “sower” here?…

The Long Road Back to Bethel

Questions to Consider for the Morning of the Church Picnic Think about this: what are some of the most terrifying verses in the Bible? Which do you think is the MOST terrifying? In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say…

Keeping Clean While Engaging Culture

It’s been called one of the most important Christian books of the 20th century: H. Richard Niebuhr’s, Christ and Culture. I read it thirty years ago, then I read it in seminary, and I read it again last year. It’s astonishing to me that a book written in 1951 about something as ‘in the now’ as engaging culture remains as relevant as it is. Sixty-seven years is a long time…

The Mercy of Jesus: A Meditation, Part 2

Mercy is one of our Father’s many magnificent attributes. Those of us who have found mercy – who have been kissed by God’s mercy – need not have it explained to us. Those who have never known it can never understand it, no matter how eloquent the explanation offered. Mercy rescued me, a guilty sinner and a lost man. Mercy delivered me from the quicksand of my own…

The Mercy of Jesus: A Meditation, Part 1

It is impossible for me to imagine that Johann Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations were written when he was only twenty-two years old. I knew nothing at twenty-two, and I sometimes feel that I know even less now! Gerhard’s Meditations are profoundly inspiring and deeply, deeply spiritual. They seem to be the work of a much older man – one who’d experienced many decades of the…

Shipwrecked!

In 1 Timothy Paul tells of a shipwreck. Not of a first century wooden ship piling her hull upon the rocks, mind you, but a shipwreck nonetheless. And one no less terrifying than any of the nautical disasters that have become so famous. “This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage…

Drifting from the Father’s Love

In Luke 15, a conflict is about to bust out between Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus is becoming popular – too popular – and with all the wrong kinds of people. “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him, “Luke tells us, “And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2).…

Be What You Want Them to Become

The power of modeling godly behavior is indisputable. Over and over again believers are encouraged to act wisely, to love generously and to live our lives with God ‘out loud’ so that others can see. Jesus told His disciples, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it…

Love to a Thousand Generations

There’s a beautiful and oft-overlooked promise in the book of Exodus. There, God describes Himself as “a jealous God” who visits “the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate” Him, but shows “steadfast love to thousands of those who love” Him and keep His commandments” (Exodus 20:5-6). It’s an interesting and…