I don’t know how many times my father said to my brother and me when we were children, “The Lord helps those who help themselves!” In the 40’s and 50’s culture that I grew up in it was a common theme which still survives today as an assumption in our culture, even though I don’t […]

As the church loses its prominent place in American society, as we lose membership in many churches, we Christians need to examine what we are doing that contributes to the loss of stature of the church and the religion itself. It is not enough to blame contemporary culture for our reduced status. We Christians have […]

The Narrow Gate I’ve been writing off and on lately about surrendering our lives to God. Today I am thinking about the “narrow gate,” which stands between belief in God and the experience of God. Jesus taught about the narrow gate: “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only […]

I think our lives are like huge ocean liners that used to take two to three hours to make a significant turn(modern ones can do a 360 degree turn in 30 minutes). Slow, steady as she goes…that is the pace of our “repentance,” of turning our lives away from the culture towards the kingdom. Like […]

There is a quote from Shakespeare that has always rung so true to me that for a long time I thought it came from the Bible: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.”[1] Today I am writing […]

In the last two weeks I’ve been writing about how disfunctionally we see ourselves and God, that if we could clean the lenses through which we view life and ourselves, we would see that we are already loved by God, just as we are. We have nothing to do except to see this reality. We […]

We can call ourselves Christian and go to church, but are we living the Gospel of Jesus Christ? or are we using the Gospel for our own purposes? Are we living Christ’s Word or our own watered-down version? The Gospel has been used over the centuries for many nefarious purposes—to convert the “infidels” during the […]

I think there are many ways to look at and to experience the spiritual journey. Here is one that I think is quite true to the essence of the journey. In this scenario there are four steps along the way. The first step has to do with acknowledging the yearning within us for more, for […]

We are born into this world a pretty complete package of personality, soul and spirit. We are created uniquely, each with certain talents and gifts and challenges, with an agenda, a potential, for our lives which is the province of the soul and the Indwelling Spirit to realize. And we are born into a human […]

  In Galatians Chapter 5 Paul wrote about love being the great agent of expression in following Christ and living by the Spirit. In verse 6 he states that “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” And then in verse 14: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one […]