Willingness and Trust

Feb 12, 2018

Willingness To give your life over to God to be born again To follow wherever He leads To lift up to Him whatever sin He highlights in us To worship Him always Faith is more than just a belief in Jesus Christ and God. Belief is a good starting point, but it won’t take you […]

Happy New Year!

Jan 01, 2018

Happy New Year! We get to begin again. Set new priories. Plan anew. Put the past behind us. Look to the future. Set ridiculous goals trying very hard to change who we are to become. All of these tendencies of thinking about the new year come from our minds which are steeped in worldly wisdom. […]

There Really Is Only One Sin–Separation From God

Nov 06, 2017

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 Simple–Love God With All of Yourself

Oct 30, 2017

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 […]

Nicodemus, a Pharisee

Oct 09, 2017

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 […]

Living with Paradox

Aug 28, 2017

Several years ago I moved three times in a year and a half. I followed my daughter and her husband up to Baltimore from Charlotte. When his new job didn’t work out, we moved back to Charlotte. I rented an apartment and then six months later, I bought a townhome and moved again. During this […]

Free Will and Rebellion

Feb 13, 2017

We could call the ancient Israelites rebellious—that was certainly their nature in the wilderness of the Exodus story. Every single time they couldn’t find the water they wanted or the food they needed, every single time they were afraid, i.e. when Moses stayed 40 days up on Mt. Sinai with God, every time things didn’t […]

3rd Step in Loving God: Surrender

Dec 19, 2016

In the last two weeks I have written about the first two steps in loving God with all of ourselves, 1- giving up our own very negative self-image and 2- exchanging our anxiety and fear for a deep trust in God for taking care of everything for us and listening for God’s wisdom in everything. […]

Redemption in Suffering

Nov 21, 2016

  The time between the mother’s diagnosis of cancer and her death was just about a year, a year that Alyssa Monks, an artist, spent in taking care of her mother. And this is what she learned from this experience: “We’re all going to have big losses in our lives…They bring us to our knees…So […]

The Narrow Gate

Oct 31, 2016

“Enter through the narrow gate.”   Jesus speaks in parables and metaphors and truth that is revealed to us as we live in him and dedicate our lives to him. He did not expect many to understand what he was saying. It’s only in the meditating on and living with a portion of his teaching, […]