We tend to think that the spirit-led life, the life of grace and mercy, is a life of free-wheeling ‘where the wind blows’ craziness. To a certain extent it is. We see this in the life of Jesus: “”The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where […]
My friend Terrell, who was in a music group with me in Europe back in the 80’s, sent this to me after reading one of these posts. I thought it was fantastic, and he agreed to let me share it. ============================ I read your blog post about God loving us, and it reminded me of […]
It has been suggested to me by a friend that mercy and grace are very different things, so I wanted to look into this. We tend to use these words a bit interchangeably and I wanted to explore the nuances of the ideas involved, as a part of my quest to understand grace. In English, […]
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. You hear all this talk about God and love and yet it immediately descends into talk of morals and guilt and forgiveness. The idea of grace […]
This is a rather technical post, and is a necessary defense of the Biblical foundation of the message of grace that I am teaching. To all who are not able or willing to follow all of this, I apologize in advance. I hope you might try to read it anyway, there is some really great […]
“Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might […]
My friend Dave Wilson relayed the story that he was stopped at an intersection behind a car and a motorcyclist. The motorcycle had fallen over sideways as it had rained and the road was slick. The guy was having a difficult time getting the motorcycle back right because the road was slick and it just […]
everything in the world is differenteverythingyour own fingerprints on your own handsare differentevery blade of grassevery treeevery thoughtevery secondevery birth and deathevery dog is differentI learned this from my 8 year old sonwho is quite different from his brothers.
I wanted to pause for a few minutes and review what is being said. If you get excited about any of this (and I hope you are) and you want to explain these ideas to a friend, I want you to have this ready on your lips; you should be able to walk away from […]
There is a passage in James that is a classic stumbling block to serious belief in the full-bore grace of God that Paul teaches. Even Martin Luther wanted to excise this book from the Bible, because he viewed it as being so antithetical to the message of salvation by faith alone apart from works of […]