I’m struck every year around this time by the word “sincere” because Linus, in “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will come only to “the most sincere” pumpkin patch. The word “sincere” is defined as “free of deceit, hypocrisy...
How do you pray? Mary and Martha give us a great example in John 11:3, which was the theme of my sermon last week. What we learn in John 11:1 is that Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was sick, so his sisters sent word to Jesus. That is prayer: sending word to...
I was reminded recently that Teresa of Avila was considered a “master of prayer” and was convicted that I am not. I suspect most of us pray and value prayer but could grow in our prayer lives. Thankfully, Scripture provides a great deal of guidance on how to pray and...
I’ve been reflecting on 1 Samuel 23:16 this week. “And Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God.” This was a remarkable thing for Jonathan to do given David was hiding from Jonathan's father and that David’s survival meant that...
The Lord has recently used both carrot and stick conversations to get me thinking about Sunday-morning worship participation. I’ll start with the “stick” and get to the “carrot” next week. This started in a meeting with other pastors from around town with one...
I was convicted recently. I was listening to a sermon by a friend and he mentioned how he had caught himself escaping to binge watching Netflix and praying less. That stung because while it isn’t Netflix for me, my distractions are just as useless. Maybe you can...
I’ve been meditating on Ecclesiastes 3:1-12 this week. This is the passage that reminds us that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the sun. I think what has drawn me to this text is that time feels very muddled right now. For example,...
The Great Commission calls on us to “make disciples,” and I’ve been thinking about how to do that. In pondering this I’ve asked, Who made me a disciple and how did they do it? For me the answer to the first part of the question is many people. The same is probably...
The word “sin” in the New Testament is related to archery and means “missing the mark.” I find this understanding of sin helpful because it brings clarity to sin’s nature. You can miss by a little or you can miss by a lot, but a miss is a miss, and so a sin is a sin....
Perhaps the most important question for everyone to answer is also an amazingly evangelical question. Jesus himself asks the question in Matthew 16 and in Mark 8 and Luke 9. “Who do you say that I am?” This question is so important because how we answer the...