I want to delve into something that may at first seem like nit-picky hair-splitting semantics. I think that if you will persevere and read to the end you will find that it is most profound and is deeply foundational to our idea of grace and the real motivation for living the Christian life. In Genesis […]
“”Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, “who, when he had found one pearl of […]
Once there was a crusty old music teacher who taught the 3rd and 4th semesters of music theory at a famous music college. As he was explaining the details of an obscure point of classical harmony, one of the students, a theory major, sent a text message to one of his friends: “How will I […]
Before we move on, I wanted to pause to give you a roadmap of the general territory you are about to traverse. There is a certain shape of theology which has arisen as I have gone down this road, and I want to give a simple overview of what is assumed in general here. 1. […]
Grace, forgiveness and mercy are the real central message of God, the core gift and offering of Jesus Christ to the world. They are the key difference between Christianity and every other system of belief. The gospel is truly good and happy news. It is not necessary or even possible to be forgiven once in […]
To the uninitiated, Christianity’s obsession with sin can seem off-putting. We don’t like to constantly face what is wrong with ourselves, and no one wants to talk about it. We hear about God and love and yet it immediately descends into talk of morals and guilt and forgiveness. The idea of grace is all wrapped […]
Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian holocaust survivor, imprisoned for sheltering Jews. She and her sister Betsie were imprisoned at a death camp called Ravensbruck. Corrie Ten Boom survived the ordeal; Betsie did not. She tells the story that after one of her talks, a former Ravensbruck guard came up and introduced himself: “”You […]
I remember distinctly the time that the central message of this book was born in me. I was running a failing business and was in the middle of laying off my treasured employees. I owed great sums of money that I had no real hope of obtaining. We were going through marriage difficulties. I was […]
Here is a song I wrote a number of years ago, performed recently live by Betty and me at House of James in Abbotsford B.C. We are submitting it to a radio station contest so I decided to post it here as well. The basic message is that when things are not going so […]
A fellow named Roger Ball posted a comment on Tullian Tchividjian’s blog in response to one of Tullian’s wonderful posts on grace: This is a gross oversimplification. Let’s take a holocaust victim for example. Let’s say that he has serious emotional problems, nightmares etc. Let’s say he also drinks very heavily and struggles everyday […]