Being Christian Without Losing Your Mind
Nearby shepherds were living in the fields, guarding their sheep at night. – Luke 2:8 The message hidden in the Christmas story is this: In God’s kingdom, ordinary people are the real heroes. Shepherds see and hear a heavenly choir. Not the rabbis. A teenage girl gets visited by an angel. Not the princess in …
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned. – Isaiah 9:2 There was one part of my job as a pastor that particularly scared me. It was being with people in the darkest point in their lives, and feeling totally inadequate. What do …
Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.” – John 11:39 Martha, the sister of her dead brother Lazarus, was saying what others were thinking. Jesus had commanded the stone in front of Lazarus’ tomb, in which the body had …
Dear friends, don’t believe every spirit. Test the spirits to see if they are from God because many false prophets have gone into the world. – 1 John 4:1 We can modernize what John says in the above warning. “Dear friends, for pity’s sake, DON’T RETWEET every tweet you get. Test them first to see …
About that time King Herod began to harass some who belonged to the church. He had James, John’s brother, killed with a sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter as well. – Acts 12:1-3a Herod Antipas followed in his father’s, Herod the Great’s, footsteps. Mean, vengeful, neurotic, violent. He also played to the …
And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” – Matthew 20:11-12 (NRSV) These workers are angry because they’ve been working since dawn and the ones who were …
He shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I’m suffering in this flame.’ – Luke 16:34 This request from the rich man in hell is easy to gloss over, because of the drama of the whole scene. Yet, look …
The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some have wandered away from the faith and have impaled themselves with a lot of pain because they made money their goal. – 1 Timothy 6:10 That phrase, “love of money,” in the original Greek, carries with it the sense of the passionate, emotional attachment you have with a lover. It’s all-consuming. It drives you. …
[Jesus said to the women on Easter morning,] “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”– Mark 16:7, NRSV I’ve read the Resurrection account innumerable times. It was just a few years ago I noticed a quirky …
“Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it?” – Luke 15:4 Well, not necessarily. It’s according to how stubborn that 100th sheep has been. Does the animal continually get out? Ignore the care …