The Message of the CROSS

Words are the secret of Christmas. Even more important than the gifts we purchase, and the packages we wrap, are the letters we write, and the syllables we mouth. And once you discover the secret, you might even spend less time sweating what to buy, and give more energy to crafting what to say. Jesus’s own words are what would make us pause and ponder the power of words at Christmas, and all year long. In   John 15:11 , he says to his followers, , “I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” It’s one thing to feel happy for a fleeting moment. It’s quite another to have Jesus’s own joy burning inside of you — to not only  taste  joy, but experience  fullness  of joy. How does that happen? How does Jesus’s own delight — dwelling in him, empowering him, filling his own soul — become  ours ? How does his own happiness come to dwell in and empower and fill us? The answer, he says, is the wonder of  words ....

PEOPLE NEED GOD You know the truth? People need God. And they know they need him. Even those who appear and act like they don't need him, know this. If you doubt me, wait till the 31st of December, a few minutes to 12 midnight. And suddenly you find every church, no matter how big or small filled with people. Many of those with folks who may never have been in one 364 of the 365 days that year. And the rationale is simple. To begin the year "WITH GOD". At the very least in a church. Many of them even go further by making sure their first spending is done in church, giving an offering - an insurance policy of some sort. They may later return to their folly, Partying and living for themselves through out the year! But those first few moments of the year, they have to "spend with God" This is what being religious typically looks like. It seeks to use God to achieve personal interests and goals. Whereas relationship is a love affair, seeking to be used of ...

Once again, I’m honored to choose my favorite nonfiction Christian books published in the last calendar year, my twelfth consecutive list. 2017 proved to be the most difficult year yet (and I’m sure I said the same thing last year), all driven by aggressive publishing momentum. This year about 120 new titles caught my attention, and I set out to read the best of them until I could whittle down a list of my 17 favorite reads from the year. But before getting to the list, a few overall comments. Female authors continue publishing new books at a swift pace, strong in 2014 and a little less prominent in 2015, but with more steam in 2016 and 2017. Women are now a mainstay and growing proportion of Christian publishing. Christian publishing continues to deliver on aesthetics across the board, both on cover design and interior design, illustrated by projects like the ESV Illuminated Bible from Crossway and the beautiful Lost Sermons of C.H. Spurgeon series ( volume 1 a...

Each of us is designed for deep, experienced, intimate friendship with God. It’s what we all long for most in the core of our being.  We are never more spiritually healthy than when we not just know about , but really know by experience, the profound love and acceptance of our heavenly Father. And when we are unsure of his love and acceptance, or reject it as being either unreal or beyond our reach, we look for substitutes to fill the void of God’s friendship. But these substitutes only do damage to us and others — and still leave us with the aching void. “Where Are You?” How do we know that we’re designed for intimate friendship with God? We know it because of the way Adam and Eve fractured this friendship. We get a glimpse of the nature of their relationship with God when they hide themselves from him in the garden over shame for what they...

Is God calling me into pastoral ministry? It’s a question many Christians wrestle with at some point in their life of faith. Not just in adolescence or early adulthood, but sometimes midlife, or even in approaching so-called retirement age. The New Testament doesn’t draw neat and distinct lines between “full-time ministry” and so-called “secular work.” In whatever God, by his providence, leads us into for our day job, he calls us to do our work “not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord” ( Colossians 3:22 ). Christ’s apostle charges all workers, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” ( Colossians 3:23–24 ; also Ephesians 6:6–8). The fundamental divide is not between full-time ministry and non-ministry jobs, but this important distinction: church office. Perhaps the better ...

Have you ever stopped to ponder just how strange everything about the birth of Jesus was? Whatever people had imagined the coming of the Messiah would look like, no one imagined it to look like it did. In all that he reveals to us about that strange first Christmas, God is saying very important things to us about how he wants us to view the perplexing, bewildering, glorious, frustrating, fearful, painful, unexpected, disappointing, and even tragic experiences of our lives. No one really understood all that was going as God the Son entered the world. No one really saw the big picture — no one except God. An Unexpected Messiah It began with the unexpected revelation of the Son of God. The existence of the Son in the Godhead was not clear to the Jews prior to his surprise appearance in Bethlehem. He was revealed in the Tanakh (Old Testament) in texts li...