May 19, 2010
This week I had the unfortunate experience of searching for a particular magazine at four different stores, all to no avail. The process reminded me that there is perhaps no more concentrated collection of our culture’s idols than the magazine rack. You know as well as I do what these idols are, so there is [...]
May 12, 2010
On Sunday we knelt together as a church family to seek God’s direction regarding how we might move toward our neighbors in love in the way Christ moved toward us in the gospel. Here are three immediate, concrete answers to those prayers that I hope will only be the beginning of a new phase of [...]
May 4, 2010
As I have read articles on our state’s new immigration law and thought through the church’s response, by far the most helpful thing I have encountered was written 60 years ago by an Oxford professor. C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters as a fictional correspondence between an older, experienced demon and his young protege. The [...]
April 28, 2010
On Sunday we caught a glimmer of Paul’s resurrection hope-based on Christ’s own resurrection-that our bodies will be transformed to a greater glory when Jesus returns. These acorn-like bodies will be changed into oak-like resurrection bodies (NOTE: I’m switching from “sycamore” to “oak,” after being informed that sycamore trees do not grow from acorns-further evidence [...]
April 21, 2010
The gospel is the message of what God has done for us to redeem us for himself. For us this finds its fullest expression in what God accomplished for us in his Son’s death and resurrection, namely, forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Yet this gospel grace existed before Jesus. Immediately after God pronounced the [...]
April 15, 2010
Baptismal services are some of my favorite church experiences, so I am still riding high from the four baptisms we celebrated on Resurrection Sunday. In fact, I am praying that the testimonies we heard would have an addictive effect on us, creating in us a deeper craving for more sinners to be redeemed by Jesus, [...]
April 15, 2010
Where do you see glory? What stands out to you as weighty, magnificent, brilliant, and notable?
If we take our cues from the magazine covers at the check-out line, we find our culture searching for glory through agile athletes, shapely models, charismatic leaders, and popular musicians. To be fair, at a deeper level the stories of [...]
March 31, 2010
If you have ever attended a Catholic Mass or a liturgical Protestant service, you know that Whitton Avenue Bible Church is about the furthest thing from “liturgical,” whether it be in the ordering of our services or in what services even have. While there are likely downsides to this way of doing things, there are [...]
March 24, 2010
“You can spend 2 hours of a film showing people falling in love or falling out of love, but you can only show 2 minutes of them being in love.”
This is a paraphrased quote I heard someone share from a personal conversation with Sydney Pollack, the late film director and actor. We can observe this [...]
March 17, 2010
This week I received alarming e-mails from three dear missionary brothers serving in sensitive Muslim contexts. These brothers minister in different capacities with different agencies in countries that are separated culturally and geographically. Yet the updates they sent were startlingly uniform: the work of the gospel is being threatened by push back from the host [...]
