Category: Uncategorized

  • Living in Plan “A”

    As people reflect on the fall of humanity into sin and God’s plan of redemption which stems from that fall, it is common to consider this plan of redemption as something of a “Plan B.” If we would have just side-stepped the temptation, wouldn’t the world be a marvelous place?! As uncomfortable as it may…

  • Building a House

    In 2Sam.7, we find King David living like a king, because he has indeed become the king of a united kingdom. But he feels a pang of conscience because he has built himself a palace while the place for worshipping God was still housed in a tent (v.2). David begins to dream of building a…

  • What the Jars of Clay Are and Are Not

    “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2Cor.4:6). I do not know of any more glorious description of our conversion to Christ than this verse! In the beginning, God…

  • The Way Things Feel vs. The Way Things Are

    “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.” –Psalm 11:4 God is present, both in His temple and on His throne. The temple is a place of atonement for the sake of worship. Blood is offered for the sins of…

  • Approaching Relationship Reverently

    We probably all keep the content of what Jesus identified as the first and great commandment near the front of our minds: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like…

  • David Strengthened Himself in God

    “And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” Everything seemed to be against David: Living in the land of the Philistines because the king of Israel sought to…

  • 2 Chronicles 31:21

    Hezekiah’s faithfulness to God does not fail to revive worship in the temple of God in his day. “And every work that he undertook in the service of the house of God and in accordance with the law and the commandments, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered.” My heart throbs…

  • Psalm 56:10,11

    “This I know, that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?” It is quite easy to misinterpret the sovereignty of God. Beginning with the understanding that He is perfectly cognizant…

  • A Third Culture

    Recently, I wrote that all gospel outreach is cross-cultural; today, I want to expand on that idea in a particular direction. Let us suppose for a moment that we are engaging “our” culture. I place “our” in quotation marks because Jesus said that we are not of this world, even as He is not of…

  • A Rough Sketch for Cross-Cultural Outreach

                It seems to me that the artificial division between evangelism and missionary outreach has handicapped our evangelism due to our too often making the assumption that we know our own culture. All outreach ought to be considered cross-cultural. In this way, we come into any conversation assuming that we know absolutely nothing of the…