Encountering God’s Amazing Grace
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23, ESV) Literary editors claim that the phrase “free gift” is redundant. They say the idea of free is implicit in the definition of “gift” and so is unnecessary to mention. However, Paul […]
Wrecked, Redeemed, and Redirected: What God’s Presence Can Do to Us
What does it do to us when we experience the presence of God? We get a snapshot in Isaiah’s commission to ministry in Isaiah 6. In the year of King Uzziah’s death, Isaiah described seeing God and receiving a commission: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated […]
Cardboard Christians
Imagine you’re a piece of cardboard. (Humor me.) If I had to speculate about the life goals of cardboard, I’d say you’d want to generally avoid getting wet. You’d try to steer clear of fire. And you’d probably do whatever it takes to stay whole—uncompressed, unstretched, and undamaged. You know, the qualities that make cardboard […]
God Renews Strength, Selves, and Sinners
God is a God who loves to renew things. Like what? Here are three. 1. God renews exhausted strength. You find yourself tired most of the time? Busier than is healthy? Under pressure and overextended? Guilty because of all the obligations you still haven’t gotten around to? And what’s even worse is that the way […]
Are We There Yet? Here’s an Invitation to Join a Groaning Creation.
Just as we are invited to join all creation in glorifying God, we are also invited to join a groaning creation in crying out to him. Hearing “Are we there yet?” from kids in the backseat had always sounded whiny to me. But this particular evening, I was in the backseat too, wondering how long […]
A Fatal Misstep in Addiction Recovery
*Editor’s Note: Because addiction can disrupt our ability to submit to God and to love ourselves and others well, followers of Jesus do well to understand the subtle causes of addiction. The following is an excerpt from Renew.org resource Untangling Addiction, by Dr. Marcus De Carvalho, M.D. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how powerful addictive feelings can […]
