When God issues a call to us, it is always a holy call. The vocation of dying is a sacred vocation. To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn. When the summons comes, we can respond in many ways. We can become...
Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires w...
I’m Christian, but if God is truly a God of love, then why would he have a private torture chamber where he put people that he was supposed to love and forgive to be punished forever? If you actually read the Bible, the idea of hell like in the mov...
Do the gods reckon up the good we do by accident, when they calculate the value of our days? My motives were selfish. Nearly always are. How much of the good I have done in my life has been done in just such a way? I fancy the gods must take this int...
God’s forgiveness doesn’t come cheaply, nor is it a ticket to do what we jolly well please because there’s a get out of jail free card at the end. Instead, it is the life-changing embrace of love that welcomes us when we’ve no reason to expec...
The difference between this waiting period and the wait that I had already been enduring was that I was no longer hoping that he would see me, wishing that he would work, or wondering if he would care. Instead, I knew that he would be at work in my m...
Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a...
The sun, moon, and stars God gave to the world, but He embedded their glories in your countenance just for me. Woven in your hair are the sun's shimmering golden rays. From your face glows the pale luminescence of the moon. And in your eyes God sprin...
It makes a world of difference to know that God loved you enough to send His only begotten Son to suffer and die for you. Suddenly our lives and sufferings aren't meanigless accident, but part of God's loving plan for us. And our acceptance of that p...
Our fights should really be for the mission of the church and the mission of the family instead of trying to have bigger churches or better families. When it comes to entities that god has created specifically to make disciples and accomplish His mis...
When we see everyone the way God sees them, all their frailties and weaknesses as well as their strengths,we can learn to treat them tenderly. We must also view ourselves from God's perspective: lovingly, tenderly, and patiently. We can do the same w...
When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but eac...
Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Year...
Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can n...
The cave floor rumbled. A large stone emerged from the dirt-a smooth, oval rock exactly the same size and weight as a baby god... She wrapped the stone in swaddling clothes and gave the real baby Zeus to the nymphs to take care of... She marched righ...
The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines...
W. S. Plumer said, “We never see sin aright until we see it as against God...All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught...Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul an...
A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing...
The fatal effects of sin can be removed only by the provision that God has made. The Israelites saved their lives by looking upon the uplifted serpent. That look implied faith. They lived because they believed God's word, and trusted in the means pro...
We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible ...
What is the meaning of life?" asked man. "Seek and ye shall find," said God. "That was my method." The man replied, "How might I do that?" "Take a setting," instructed God. "Add some dirt and water, mold it into something likeable. Let there be light...
