Do We Recognize Redemption When It Happens Right in Front of Us?
In Luke 7 Jesus is in the house of Simon the Pharisee. While they are reclining at the table a “sinful” woman comes in and anoints Jesus, first with her tears and then with some perfume she had brought with her. Luke tells us she had learned that Jesus was in the house and she […]
TED Talks: The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Adichie
HT: Steven Hovater
Finding the Contentment Balance in the Church
Being in ministry makes me look at things with a different eye than I used to. I am constantly asking how things can be made better or what isn’t working the way it should. I think those are valuable things to think about because unless we are willing to critique things we can’t expect them […]
Discipleship, Acceptance and Grace
20 times in the Gospels Jesus says, “Follow me.” Is there any greater invitation in all of scripture than for the Son of God to invite sinful men to walk in his steps? As has been said a million times on a million websites, discipleship is about following Jesus Christ. What hit me about discipleship […]
God’s Grace Really is Amazing
For the last seven weeks our men’s class has been on “Grace”. If I had to sum up what we have found in the Old and New Testaments so far it would go something like this, “Because we don’t deserve God doing anything for us, the grace that He pours out on our lives is […]
Grace in the Parables – Two Debtors
In Matthew 18:21 Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive his brother, seven times? It seems to me Peter is asking Jesus what the limits of grace really are? Just how far does God expect his people to extend grace to others? So Jesus tells them a story about a man who […]
Grace in the Parables
While it was pointed out in a comment here on the blog that Jesus never really used the word “grace” in his recorded teachings in the New Testament it is clear that the concept of grace characterizes much of his teachings. One place it shows up with regularity is in the parables. I want to […]
Discipline and Grace – Two Sides of the Same Coin
In Exodus 32 the Hebrews made a crucial mistake. In their impatience for God to act they made an idol to represent the “gods who brought them out of Egypt” and they worshiped it. Needless to say God was none too happy. Instantly He knew exactly what had happened and threatened to destroy them (32:10). […]
Jesus – Grace and Truth
In the last post about Bible classes on grace, Charlie (who is a good friend of mine) astutely observed that Jesus is never recorded using that word in the Gospels. That is an interesting observation and one that I haven’t ever noticed before. He certainly embodied it in the way he lived his life and […]
Bible Classes on Grace
It was pointed out a week or so ago over in the Bible Class Archive that it is hard to find good Bible class material on the topic of grace. There are some great books out there but little material for actually teaching it. Yancey has a participants guide for his book but I don’t […]