A few days ago someone handed me an article that I wrote 16 years ago. As I re-read it later (while wondering why it had been handed to me), I felt impressed to reprint it in this month’s Priority to help our pastors and teachers begin thinking about their Good Friday and Easter themes. God […]
Jesus had twelve disciples, and one day, nine of them got into a serious situation which God used to answer the question which we have all wondered: “Do I have enough faith?” It happened this way: Jesus had divided the disciples into two groups—three in one group and the remaining nine in the other. He […]
Can you remember when the news was something you had to wait for instead of something you couldn’t avoid? (For those of you born in the digital generation, we used to catch up on the news by holding sheets of printed paper up in front of our faces … sheets of paper so large that […]
There is no doubt that it is more blessed to give than to receive because Jesus said so. But it doesn’t always feel like blessing. In fact, giving is high-risk behavior … a high-stakes proposition. How could that be? The answer may surprise you: Giving is a huge act of vulnerability. Have you ever thought […]
I recently stumbled across a training video by a master craftsman in which he demonstrated making a powerful sword from raw steel. I learned that to forge steel, you put it in the fire. As soon as it is glowing fiercely from the heat, you take it out of the fire and immediately (while it […]
Have you ever tried to think about what Eden must have been like? For some people, it has the vague feeling of a fairy tale, but that is mostly because it is extremely hard for us to picture a time before sin had separated us from God. Other people have been conditioned (in their thinking […]
What is wrong with the logic in this? In God’s presence is fullness of joy. (Psalm 16:11) All humans live in God’s presence (since God is present everywhere). Therefore, all humans have fullness of joy. Obviously, something must be wrong here! You don’t have to be a Bible expert to know that sentence #3 is […]
We have a phrase in English when we disapprove of something that someone does. We say that they are “out of line.” We might say to someone, “When you told the judge exactly what you thought of him in court today, you were way out of line.” And what we mean is, “You were wrong.” […]
Our human history began in a real place on earth—a geographic space that we call the Garden of Eden. The Hebrew word that we translate garden means a “guarded” or “protected” place. The word referred to a place about which you cared enough to enclose or protect in some way. I suppose we could just […]
During my first visit to Asia, I spent a couple of weeks in Southwest China… in an area that never sees Westerners. When we would walk around a corner, the people who looked at us would LITERALLY jump back and stare at us, open-mouthed. They would walk up and look us up and down. They […]