It is the whole lot of us that He intends to be holy and blameless. There cannot be a few mature and successful while others are struggling with unholiness and blame. As I always say, if there is a little drop of pee in your coffee, the whole cup is disgusting. If all are not holy and blameless, the whole lot of us together are unholy and blameful.
I’m starting a new sermon series at Bread and Wine Fellowship on the fabulous book of Ephesians. We already started last week, and I’ll post some things from my introductory and overview thoughts later. Today I want to jump into the text. I’m posting stuff from my study process in case someone might enjoy or […]
How can I overcome the fear of failing an Almighty God? God is indeed almighty! You don’t understand God’s kind of love if you don’t understand that He is all-powerful and constantly ready to judge you for your secret shameful life. After all, you wouldn’t even be asking this if there wasn’t obvious sin in your life. But if you repent and make it stick, and get rid of the habitual sin in your life, and really make your life to be all about loving God and loving others, and never do any obvious sins like sexual sins especially, you can feel good about knowing that you are not failing God.
I am just returning from the Mockingbird Spring conference in NYC, where I heard Nadia Bolz-Weber give a talk. Of course, I should be doing a whole conference review, and maybe I will. However, she told some extremely powerful stories that hinged on confession. Confession is of course a HUGE part of my idea of […]
The law demands that we seek God, but the gospel declares that God seeks us! Death can’t even stop Him! We are so distracted, so sinful, so fearful, and so bad at persistence. We never seek with enough genuine fervor. We have not really striven to find God or obey Him (Hebrews 12:4, 1 John 1:10). But even death can’t distract Jesus Christ.
It’s Easter! It’s Good Friday today. For me, it’s always Good Friday. I think about and talk about Jesus Christ and Him crucified all the time, because I need it so much! Sunday is coming and I’ve been thinking about the resurrection a lot this week. We usually think of the resurrection in terms of […]
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer […]
There is a transformation that happens to us right exactly when we believe. However, it is not the transformation we were looking for, having been immersed our whole lives under the threat of the law. The real change is a shift in trust away from self to God. If the change were a change in success at keeping the law instead of a change of trust, why would we need the new testament imperatives?
Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more…
We will in all likelihood find it impossible to see change in one another on a day-to-day or even a week-to-week basis. Genuine growth happens slowly, like trees, and not everyone is even a healthy tree in the first place.