Words cannot describe God. They are merely common symbols, something that we can agree on, but which never convey His true nature, His beauty, creation, love, forgiveness, mercy and mystery. The word God stands in for the mystery of His love and forgiveness, a Father to us all who just loves those He created. It […]
What is it like to be a branch on the vine? To have God prune the dead wood off of you? To encourage your growth? To have things happen to you that scar your branch and yet you are still a part of the vine? What is it like to be dependent on the vine […]
Don’t wait until you die to live in the kingdom of God! Jesus spoke of the kingdom in the present tense: it “is at hand,” [Matthew 3:2 KJV] or “has come near you,” [Matthew 3:2 NIV] “is within you,” [Luke 17:21 KJV] or “is in your midst,” [Luke 17:21 NIV] or “is already among you.”[Luke […]
Two snakes: one in Genesis 3 and one in Numbers 21. Since I’ve spent the last few years knee-deep in the Exodus story, I finally made the connection between these slithery creatures the other day. Aha! I thought, these two snakes are connected. The first snake, the one in Genesis, represents Satan or the Devil […]
The last several weeks I’ve been focusing on what it means to love God with all of ourselves as Jesus commanded. This week I want to add one more way in which we can love God with all of ourselves. When we give our whole selves to God in love, we are giving […]
There really is only one sin—separation from God. Every other thing that we label sin is merely a manifestation of the state of being separate from God. If we were living in God, with God or in Christ’s mind, how could we hurt someone else, reject another human being, judge someone else? Or do anything […]
It’s so complicated to follow all of Jesus’ teachings, to keep them all in mind, from the Sermon on the Mount to the parables and other sayings, but I am convinced that if we are obedient to His First Great Commandment and to the first four of the Ten Commandments, we cannot do anything that […]
The spiritual journey has been described classically in four stages: awakening, purgation, illumination and union. Awakening is the first movement in the journey into God’s world. It can be a direct answer to God’s call to be born again, to surrender your life to him. Or we can be thrown out of our normal life […]
We are raised to be “letter of the law” people. We learn to obey our parents. Our teachers. Our traffic laws. The laws of our nation. The trouble is that we’re not very good at following the letter of the law. All one has to do is to drive the streets and highways of our […]
Nicodemus is mentioned three times in the Gospel of John. The first time Nicodemus, a Pharisee, appears in John 3:1-21 he comes to Jesus at night, affirming that Jesus must have come from God because otherwise He wouldn’t be able to do all the signs and miracles of His ministry. Jesus replies, “No one can […]