157 results for tag: Front page

The Ultimate Declaration of God’s Grace

Americans are used to hearing the President of the United States make critically important announcements either from the Oval Office, simply speaking to television cameras, or to a combined, televised session of Congress. And, as they begin their term of office, Presidents give an inaugural address, during which many of them attempt to rally the nation behind their clear vision. In 1865, during the final days of the Civil War, addressing a nation tired of bloodshed, Abraham Lincoln, who would be assassinated only 41 days after this address, said, in part: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives ...

Go to Him Outside the Camp

On what we now call Palm Sunday, almost 2,000 years ago Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a humble donkey. He was welcomed by people who had heard him preach—among whom were the poor, the diseased, the disenfranchised and outcasts, all of whom shouted "Hosanna!" to Jesus (Matthew 21:9, 15). Many Christians think "Hosanna" has always been defined as a joyful worship word. It hasn't. Hosanna means "save us now"— it was a cry of desperation, shouted at Jesus by the crowds as he entered Jerusalem. Most who greeted Jesus with "Hosanna" wanted physical relief from their physical problems and afflictions—but, in addition, there may well have been ...

Who Is It You Are Looking For?

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"—John 20:11-15 The religious lynch-mob convened an illegal trial, declared an innocent man guilty and condemned him to death. Of course, it wasn't the ...

Why Did Jesus Die?

Why did Jesus die?" may seem like an easy question, because the answer seems obvious, doesn't it? Normally, most Christians immediately answer the question something like this: "He died to atone, that is pay for, our sins. As the Lamb of God, he took away the sins of the world, redeeming us from sin through his precious blood. He died that we might die to sin, so that he might live in us, producing his righteousness within us." That answer is true—but it's not the whole story. Much of the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, presents the cross of Christ as a forensic event. That is, God uses the language and word pictures of the ...

Being In Christ

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.—John 15:12-17 When we consider our relationship with God ...

A Covenant – Not a Contract!

There is probably no other human endeavor quite like marriage—sadly, many of these partnerships that begin with such hope and expectation regularly fail. One of the reasons marriages fail is because many see marriage and the entire relationship through the eyes of a contract rather than through the perspective of a covenant. Marriage, an example of a human covenant, can help us to understand the divine relationship God offers to each of us. He offers us the new covenant in Christ, not the new contract in Christ. It's a covenant, NOT a contract! • A contract is a legally binding agreement between two parties, a business agreement which ...

Going to the Dogs

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly." Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." "Yes it is, Lord," she said. "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." ...

God’s Grace is For Everyone

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.—Titus 2:11 You are invited to the kingdom of heaven, and the invitation is called "the gospel" (good news) because it has no strings attached. You and I are invited to the kingdom of heaven in spite of what we have done! The body of Christ on earth is not the equivalent of an exclusive country club or a cloistered, highly restricted religious fraternity or union. Titus 2:11 says that God's grace is available to everyone—it does not promise or insist that everyone receives and accepts it —but grace is available, and it's for everyone. There's a story I once heard ...

Intimacy With God

Here's some breaking news! God is head-over-heels in love with you. He loves you beyond your wildest imaginations. You might respond, "How can he love me that much? He knows all there is to know about me. And of course, anyone who knows that much about me could never really love me." Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian writer who, with her family, helped many Jews escape the Holocaust, once offered a word picture to explain how God loves us—specifically she was talking about how he forgives all our sins—past, present and future. Corrie Ten Boom said that God takes all of our shortcomings, tragedies, flaws and scandals and throws them into ...

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

When you were in your early teens, just beginning to discover that the opposite sex existed, you may remember playing the game "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not." The game was all about "love" as we understood it at the time. Back in the "olden days," when we had a crush on someone, and we weren't really sure whether they liked us or not, most of us were too reluctant and shy to find out by more direct means—like asking. Times have really changed haven't they? Back then we would find a flower and begin to pull its petals, playing the He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not game. The last petal left on the flower answered the question, didn't it? If ...

A Canary in a Coal Mine

Years ago coal miners in the United States and the United Kingdom took caged canaries down into the mine with them as an early warning system. Canaries are extremely sensitive to toxic gases such as carbon monoxide and methane. The earliest mines didn't have ventilation systems, so canaries helped detect toxic gases long before humans could. The canaries served as an audible and a visual cue regarding the condition of the air the miners were breathing. As long as the miners could see that the canary was alive, and could hear the canary singing, the miners knew that the air was safe to breathe. A silent, dead canary meant that the miners needed ...

Twice As Much as a Child of Hell

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. —Matthew 23:15 The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis includes a fascinating story about a young boy's first encounter with religion and one of its religious professionals. Since Lewis is one of my favorite authors, I've read and studied about his own childhood, and it seems that some of what he is talking about in this fictional story is autobiographical, with a direct relationship to his own experiences with Christ-less religion when he was ...

Hooked on a Feeling

Once upon a time, the word "addiction" was used almost exclusively to define and describe dependence on mood altering substances. Addiction is centered on sensory stimulation and gratification. When a particular chemical substance that produces an incredible "rush" or "high" wears off, an individual starts returning to the drug to experience the same feeling again. Substance addiction is further understood as continued involvement with a drug because of immediate pleasure and gratification, in spite of the negative consequences the addict would eventually experience. Today we speak not only of substance addiction but also, in a broader context, ...

When Christ-less Religion Meets God’s Grace

All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.—John 16:1-3 What happens when fear, shame and guilt meet God's unconditional love? Human history is a record of titanic struggles and classic confrontations. Biblically, we think of Moses and the seemingly defenseless Israelites, hemmed in by the mountains, with the Red Sea at their back, being pursued by the finest, most well-equipped and trained army in the world at that time. ...

Grace – Up on the Roof

The second chapter of Joshua tells us that a woman named Rahab found grace in the most unexpected manner and place. This story would make a great Hollywood action-thriller. It's a story that includes adventure, suspense, military conflict, spies—and, of course, a beautiful woman. It has all the elements of a block-buster hit at the box office. The leading character of this drama is a prostitute named Rahab. We can be fairly certain that Rahab was not invited to join the important clubs in Jericho where she lived, because she lived and worked on the fringes of polite society. While Rahab's way of earning a living may have been more acceptable ...

The God of Comfort

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,  To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are ...

God Comes Near

Imagine, for a moment, that you are part of a team building a skyscraper. Your team building this "high rise" would need, of course, a great deal of expertise to ensure that a sound foundation would be laid. Considerable expense and work is involved in preparing the foundation of any edifice that eventually soars majestically, hundreds of feet into the air. Skyscrapers are incredibly heavy, so they must be built on much more durable foundations than smaller buildings. In virtually every case, a skyscraper requires a deep foundation, with pilings, drilled shafts and columns put in place using a pile driver—all reinforced by concrete. When ...

Despised and Rejected of Men

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. —Isaiah 53:1-3 Isaiah says that Jesus was despised. Jesus wasn't merely ignored or disliked. Jesus wasn't regarded as just a minor irritant—he was hated and despised—strong language—powerful emotions! W...

I Am Alive For Ever and Ever!

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I Am Alive for Ever and Ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades."—Revelation 1:17-18 You know, almost every time that God came to someone in the Bible to tell them he wanted them to fulfill a certain responsibility, he received a similar response. Moses said he wasn't fit for the job because he had a speech impediment. Jonah of course ran away in the opposite direction. When Peter became more aware that Jesus was God in the flesh he told Jesus to ...

Do Not Be Afraid

The time and culture of Jesus' birth was not unlike the world in which we live today. For that matter, it was just like any generation or era in history. The specific people, land and culture to which Jesus came was a world permeated with fear at almost every level. The Jews were an occupied people. They suffered under grinding poverty and heavy taxation. There was a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Life expectancy, particularly among the poor, is estimated to have been in the mid-30s to early-40s. Fear is a part of what it means to be human. It's a common and normal emotional reaction. • We have fears that we will live so long that ...