His first step is to make temptation appear as a natural desire. It is something unequivocally physical and human.
How do we build root systems capable of weathering every storm that seeks to draw us into the temporary and the profane?
Capturing the beauty of the conversion of the water into wine, the poet Alexander Pope said, “The conscious water saw its Master and blushed.
God clearly called me into the preaching and teaching ministry, principally in hostile arenas. An odd call for a shy individual, I would think! But God does it his way.
A society that hates laws that guard the soul despises not so much the laws as much as it despises the very thought of a soul. Those who belong to such a society consider the flesh the totality of their being.
Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father.
If the loss of shame was the child of secularization, the loss of reason is the child of pluralization.
Unsuspecting people make a fatal mistake when they give their allegiance to a system of thought by focusing on its benefits while they ignore its systemic contradictions.
A knowledge and appreciation of history is difficult for a culture so enthralled by the moment, a culture that shuns the discipline of a larger context in any study. Unfortunately this loss of historical interest has made the present difficult to address because the context of the past is imperative if we are to salvage the future.
Our society is walking through a maze of cultural land mines and the heaviest price is exacted as we send our children on ahead.
At the end, Job discovered that this God who was his Creator and Designer, his Revealer and Comforter, his Mediator and Savior, was also his Strengthener and Restorer.
All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life’s purpose. Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive. But.
Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus’ offer to us: Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.
Four words that are easy to grasp capture the medium of television: induction, seduction, deduction, and reduction. Take a good look at those four words, and it is easy to see how we have found ourselves playing mind games in a world of images, running counter to truth and redemption.
God’s grace is beyond description. He lifted all of us over the walls of our own imprisonment.
Marriage is not a commercial enterprise in which you replace a car you have tired of with another one. The truth is that the new car will lose its appeal, too, to say nothing about yourself.
Chinese proverb says, “If you want to know what water is, don’t ask the fish.” Most Hindus know little about Hinduism’s scriptures or its development in dogma. Most Buddhists know little about Buddhism. Religion is much more a culture to most people than it is a carefully thought-through system of truth. Even Islam finds the same ignorance. Dare I say most Christians know very little about the teaching and history of their own beliefs.
Jesus did not merely claim to be a prophet in a continuum of prophets. He is the unique Son of God, part of the very Godhead that Christianity calls the Trinity.
The tragedy with growing up is not that we lose childishness in its simplicity, but that we lose childlikeness in its sublimity.
When we come to know our Creator, the questioning is not for doubting but for putting it all together and marveling at His wonders.
People in pain may look for comfort and explanations. People disappointed in pleasure look for purpose.