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So here I sit, wrestling through this reality, all the while examining areas of my life where my worship is misplaced. How have I been duped?

I may feel exhausted or discouraged or wounded by events in my life, but do I recognize the underlying battle?

...the Revelation of John for things to come points to a people so engrossed in their self-sufficiency that the thunder of heaven cannot turn their unrepentant hearts - how much like that are we? How much like that am I?

God had kept his promise and given his Holy Spirit to the disciples. And now he was giving it to all who trusted in Christ for salvation.

“How long this world will suffer, how long I will suffer… Do you hear my cries? Do you know the brokenness?”

My trials and suffering feel like the squashing of color and blurring of lines to the point that my portrait isn’t the perfect and skilled mimesis of what the world expects. Yet, there is so much more depth, so much more character.

Even in this chapter, of this overwhelming book, we see how all of scripture is brought together to accomplish the same plan that has been laid out in the Bible all along.

Turns out, I may be pretty good at structuring a prayer, and asking for spiritual-sounding things, but this weekend God reminded me that I’ve also been pretty good at missing the point of prayer.

When I realized a few months ago that Easter fell on April 1 this year, I initially saw it as incongruous - the high point of the Church calendar juxtaposed with the a day of playful trickery.

Despite the fact that Jesus literally states in the verse that he will be with us “always, to the end of the age,” I often feel alone when confronted with the idea of trying to share the Gospel.

As broken as this earthly existence can be, there are eternal promises that break through and transcend the brokenness.

Much like the city of Pergamum, I followed the only way I had known, and in doing so I had no compass for my life...

The book of Revelation, I have found, as I’m sure have many of you, is one of the books of the Bible where I really have a difficult time getting the message from my head to my heart.

Living under the new covenant of Jesus’ blood, we also get to see the beautiful picture of Jesus drawing people from every nation, tribe, and tongue to Himself.

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to inspire people to ask deep questions about the meaning of life, justice, and the existence of evil and hardship.

The rainbow is not a promise that life will get better after experiencing a storm. The rainbow is the promise that God will send a rescue, that God will be our refuge.

I feel glimmers of joy as I walk the aisles of Target perusing Christmas decorations or when I’m driving in my car listening to 24-7 Christmas radio, but I also feel sad.

We look forward and say there is a better day coming because of Jesus. And not only do we look forward, but we hasten it by living today as a renewed people in the midst of that broken world.

What was once unending, immediate, and bountifully provided, within a few bites of fruit was now cursed with enmity, great pain, and toil. Marriage was once to be harmonious and is now divisive, pain is brought forth at the births of our children, God is farther away from us and we dig through thistles for fruit.

The great news is, we already know how the battle ends.

Satan placed doubt of God's goodness and sovereignty in the minds of Adam and Eve just as sin does to us now. Instead of looking to God, we look to the “Tree” for our fulfillment...

We were made for this interdependent community. We were made to share those extreme differences in order to produce extreme growth. We were made to be with one another in order to remove the possibility of the bad: loneliness.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil represents the fall of men and the tree of life reflects the way God designed us to exist. Between these two trees, there stands the tree that Jesus died on to pay the price of the fall and reconcile us to God.

It’s not that God was any less present to them or working any fewer miracles of deliverance and preservation among them over those years; it’s just that they stopped seeing Him. They stopped recognizing His faithfulness to them. And I do the same thing.

As we deal with so much uncertainty in this life, what do we do with that? More often than not, we try to create safety, security, comfort, “home” in the temporary things of this world.

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul" -Mark Twain

If I truly understand that God loves me, not just in some generic sense but intensely and personally, it changes everything. Love like that isn’t something that can be met with indifference, any more than I could respond to a marriage proposal with a shrug.

The good news is God is a homemaking God.

Developing a regular practice of exercise is beneficial, but establishing godly practices builds spiritual muscles with benefits that extend way beyond the physical body. We get a glimpse of these benefits in Daniel chapter 6.

There is such an urgent need for Jesus in this city that it becomes overwhelming and easy to give up on people and our mission.

"Now, how his lordship works out is then through the work of the church. But he is the Lord and is present with and through his church, as we are doing what we are called to do." ~ N.T. Wright

You see, I’m not that different from Nebuchadnezzar. He wanted to build a legacy for himself, and he did. Just like him, I’m trying to build a legacy… And I’m anxious when I think that I might not accomplish these goals or, even worse, that having accomplished them I might see them taken away from me.

"There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He." -Friedrich Nietzsche

When my head and my heart forget what is true, I find myself sacrificing my life to the myriad gods of health, wealth, work, marriage and home...So how, in the face of both external and internal pressures toward alternate values and identities, can I maintain my identity in Christ?

The love that can really change things here in our city, that redeeming love, is always sacrificial. My gut reaction to this is to wonder if I can schedule that into my life: like maybe I have a window on Monday mornings I could give sacrificial love to my city. After all, I’m a busy person. But what would it mean for me to just start to go about my day caring more, noticing more, loving sacrificially?

It is so tempting to pray for circumstances to change, to get mad at God when they don’t, and to hold a grudge of resentment rather than “accept with serenity” the things that cannot be changed.

I wonder how the priests felt every day when they went into the temple and saw the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. Did they look at it with dread? Or curiosity? Or maybe they longed to be in God's presence just for a moment even if it killed them...

It is because of and through this good news that we can live under the banner “it is finished” and embark on the parenting adventure from grace instead of for grace.

The Gospel of Jesus reminds me that I am free. That I am validated. That I am vindicated. That even though I lose, I win.

God calls us to a beautiful, eternal family that knows no geographic, political, gender, generational, or racial barriers.

A theology that cannot be sung is not worth having...

There is not any other distinction or any other belief system that can make us one, but the spirit of God that we share makes us one. So we hold on to our distinctions, and we regard each other as children of God, made in his image, and we listen empathically (as even Rogers identified as crucial for relationships!) from a position of peace and gentleness, full of mercy, impartial and sincere.

Michael Kelshaw's sermon on "Singleness Reimagined" had me thinking about several conversations I've had that I would love to revisit with the Good News he shared.

Thinking through some of the implications for single believers who are thinking seriously about staying single for life.

The Gospel not only reimagines race, it turns our conception of race in America on its head, completely upside down, and gives us a perspective and reality of a truly diverse people seen and celebrated for their distinctiveness while at the same time abolishing any and all disparity between them.

Unpacking Psalm 121 as a picture of life's journey and God's protection.

Why does a meeting like this matter?