Serving Christ in México
This is the second in a series about the “impossible” faith of the saints listed in Hebrews 11. For part one click here.
Gideon
Like Noah, Abraham, and others, God asked Gideon to do something which seemed very strange. Yet, Gideon believed God, and as a result he was used by God to win an improbable victory.
Continue reading “Impossible Faith – Part Two”
In one sense, faith in God is impossible. From the point of view of the lost sinner – blind to the action of God in the world and deaf to the words of God – faith is utterly ridiculous and one giant leap too far. Faith is only possible when the Spirit of God opens the sinner’s eyes to the unseen. Until that happens, the life of faith will appear to be utter nonsense.
Continue reading “Impossible Faith – Part One”
Why is faith so hard? Sure, there are mountaintop moments and golden summers where we feel God’s presence as real as anything. But more often than not, especially in the muck and madness of the world, God appears distant and faith seems a scandal. Both skeptic and saint have wondered how there can be both a good, all-powerful God in heaven and a world full of death and decay down below. And that is just the beginning of a landslide of questions which threaten to smother our faith and leave it for dead.
Continue reading “Why Is Faith So Hard?”
When your world gets turned upside down it can leave you disoriented and afraid. You suddenly find yourself in a place you have never been, nor imagined, and everything you thought you knew gets called into question. That’s kind of what has happened with the sudden emergence of COVID-19 as a world threat. Our lives have either already been turned upside down by this new reality, or they are at the tipping point and it doesn’t take much for us to imagine what it might be like. We start asking the big “what if” question and it’s not hard to think it could come to fruition.
Continue reading “What It Means To Live”
Those who have grown up within the walls of a Reformed church know well that good works do not save and are nothing to boast about. All glory to God! We hear this truth repeatedly from the pulpit, the catechism classroom and around the supper table. And so it should be. If God compares our good works to something worse than filthy rags, then what folly it is to boast in them.
Continue reading “Boasting in Our Faith”
Why do we do good works? Across the centuries, many answers have been offered to this question. The role of good works in the life of the Christian lies at the crux of what separates the Christian religion from all the rest. It also has divided churches in the past and remains a contested issue today.
Continue reading “Good Works For What?”
The Bible does not speak of the gods of the nations as harmless statues or mere figments of the human imagination. That may seem a provocative statement, but the Bible often speaks of the other “gods” of this world, and one only has to pick through Psalms to verify it (e.g. Psalm 82, 86, 96, etc.). While it is true that God openly mocks the idle images which the people created as gods, it is also true that there is a real power which they possess. The power is not in the wooden carvings or metal figurines, but in the dark demonic powers which lay behind the images. Behind the varied masks of the gods was the “god of this age” – Satan himself (see 1 Cor.10:19-20). And so, God speaks of these “gods” as real powers possessing a real power to lead people astray. This may be surprising to our modern minds, specifically our scientific minds, which so easily dismiss the gods of other nations as totally empty of any existence, let alone power.
Continue reading “Who is the Real God?”
Peace is always popular – so is preaching about peace. People want to know that everything will be alright and that all the pain and hurt of this life are worth it. We want to be assured that we are really not as bad as we seem and all will turn out in the end. And no wonder. Our world is overrun with chaos and uncertainty and true, lasting peace remains elusive. Our own lives can be equally chaotic as we deal with broken relationships and inner struggles. Peace is good and right, but it is hard to come by.
Continue reading “Peace When There Is No Peace”
There is a way to make theology so abstract that it loses all meaning to us. Take for example the essential idea of salvation. We can so easily speak of our salvation without giving much thought to what lies behind it. Within the church we can talk endlessly about salvation and yet fail to think about what we are being saved from, or what we are being saved to. Salvation then becomes a part of our Christian jargon, but it rarely is defined in a tangible, even earthy, way. Of course, this can happen with any number of the creeds and doctrines of the church – they remain floating in the realm of the abstract instead of imbedding themselves deep within the concrete realm of our thinking, actions and imagination.
Continue reading “Siege Works and a Few Strands of Hair”
Jesus is born! The long-awaited Messiah has arrived and redemption is just around the corner. The hope of humanity has taken the form of an infant child wrapped in shreds of cloths and carefully placed in a feed trough. This is surprising news, but it is good news. And who might be the first to hear of it?
Continue reading “Shepherds and Sages”
The Rabbi's Burrito 