One of the benefits of growing older is getting to be a grandpa, and I am loving the experience that my ten grandchildren are providing for me to be one. Getting to watch them mature, get married (my two oldest grandsons), begin their families and then learning to relate to them as adults has been incredibly enjoyable to me. As I have gone through each of those steps with them as their grandfather, I have realized that I am not only getting better at…
Last week we made the case, with supporting scripture, that living by faith is the freedom to do exactly what we want to do. The response to that admittedly unconventional idea is generally either “This is heretical, antinomian and non-Christian,” or “This is too good to be true!”, and there are two perfectly logical reasons for those reactions. Both heredity (I am a fallen son of Adam-”nature”) and environment (I grew up in today’s legalistic version of Christianity-”nurture”) militate against any other response. However,…
The gospel of the grace of God we discuss weekly in this blog is audacious, scandalous, and even licentious to typical, unknowingly legalistic Christians, still alive and well in today’s church, just as they were in Paul’s day. “What shall we say then? (“Paul, it sounds like this is what you are saying”). Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound” (Romans 6:1)? Wherever the gospel of the grace of God is preached, this same question is asked today, just as in Paul’s…
Why do I find myself always thinking I know what’s best, not only for me but for everyone else as well, and then being so reluctant to face the results of those decisions? Because I am still a selfish sinner who has not yet learned to consistently, as Jesus admonished me to do, “deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me,” i.e., “walk by faith.” I am still trapped in an unredeemed, corrupt body that still makes me want to live by…
We have seen over the past few weeks that 1.) a new birth and 2.) a new spiritual understanding of the reality of my own sin and God’s limitless forgiveness constitute going through the gate and beginning the walk down the path of “walking by faith,” a very familiar but little-understood phrase for most Christians. Today we will investigate the only way of experientially continuing, or “keepin’ on keepin’ on” in that journey—3.) a new, daily, cross experience. In Luke 9:23, just after Peter’s…
Today we look at three examples in the Bible of pius, zealous, followers of God, the “Christians” of their day, who are subsequently “born again” and embark on a new life with a brand new experience of God, just as we have been discussing. In the process they discover what it really means to follow Him. 1.) Isaiah: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled…
All families have a lifestyle that is characteristic of that family, not only what they do, but how they do it. Some families are more disciplined, organized, with all activities carefully planned. Other families are more relaxed, more spontaneous. Some are academic with the pursuit of education primary and ongoing, while others are more entertainment and recreation oriented. Some are athletic, some into music, still other families attend church and other religious activities, while some families consider travel to be a major component of…
After I posted last week’s analysis of Paul’s famous agape love verses in 1 Corinthians 13, I realized that my own understanding of that passage had changed dramatically over the 60 years I have been familiar with it. I recognized that that change mirrored beautifully my own personal growth as a Christian, as God continues to bring me “to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of…
Some time ago, in a marital counselling appointment, I asked the counselee this question. His answer was not immediately forthcoming. Suspecting that it was a trick question, he slowly and cautiously answered, “Well, I think so.” During that session we discussed that the Bible teaches a husband’s agape love for his wife is the foundation upon which marriage is built. The husbands are commanded to “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Wives are…
As we discussed last week, Corrie ten Boom in her book The Hiding Place, tells the story of watching her sister Betsie, in a brutal, barbaric, dehumanizing Nazi prison camp in 1944, live an attack-with-love brand of Christianity right before her eyes. It is this brand of the faith that Jesus says in Matthew 16:18 the very gates of Hell cannot stop. It does not take too many stories like Corrie’s to underscore that this kind of Christianity is generally not on display in…