Hope Healed Her (and it just might help you too)

Imagine waking up one morning with the ability to see out of only one good eye, without the power to move your limbs, and with a tangle of tubes extending from your body like tentacles. Now imagine having no idea how you got in such a predicament. Such is the story of my friend Katherine

God’s Will: Can It be Found and Followed?

What if knowing God’s will for your life was not as complicated as it seems? pic courtesy pdpics.com I have a friend who has struggled for a very long time to understand what God’s plan is for him. Like all of us, he longs to know that he’s in “the center of God’s will.” He’s

Baptism: Wading the Waters Together

My last post—The Power of Presence—was about the power of God’s presence with us and our presence with each other, and I want to share with you a beautiful moment from last week that illustrates again the gift of God’s presence through his people… The story begins with AJ, who walked into the church where

The Power of Presence

I’ll never forget where I first learned about the power of presence. It was in a hospice care facility in east Texas where my sweet grandmother, Jo, was dying. My grandfather, her husband of 58 years, never left her bedside. He comforted her, supported her, and helped ready her for eternity with the simple power

Not Opposed to Effort: Solutions for Better Discipleship (solution #2)

(This post is the 5th and final blog in a series about the nature of discipleship in our churches today.)   Making disciples is what the Church was made by God to do. In this series I explain why we aren’t doing it well (Read it here)  and two things that stand in our way

Not Opposed to Effort: Solutions for Better Discipleship (solution #1)

(This post is the 4th blog in a series about the nature of discipleship in our churches today.)   In the first post of this series (Read it here) I argued that the American church’s misunderstanding of the phrase “grace is enough” causes us to miss out on what it truly means to be disciples of

Not Opposed to Effort: The Second Roadblock to Discipleship

(This post is the 3rd blog in a series about the nature of discipleship in our churches today.)  In the first post of this series (Read it here) I argued that the American church’s misunderstanding of the phrase “grace is enough” causes us to misrepresent the Christian life and miss out on what it truly

Not Opposed to Effort: Two Roadblocks to Discipleship

(This post is the 2nd in a series about the nature of discipleship in our churches today. Click here to read the first post.)  In last week’s post (Read it here) I argued that our misunderstanding of the oft-used phrase “grace is enough” causes us to misrepresent the Christian life and miss out on what

Not Opposed to Effort: The Work of Discipleship

Grace is not enough. That sentence alone will send the reformed crowd into orbit, and it just might make the rest of you scramble for Bible verses that refute works-based righteousness. But when I was recently asked to comment on Christian discipleship today, I could not help but think that grace is not enough. Obviously

I’m only eating rice and beans this year (so far)

I’m never more content than the Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend. The previous 72 hours are filled (literally) with turkey and pumpkin pie. And lots of it. And when Sunday morning rolls around I am primed and ready to worship God for all his bountiful blessings in my life. But then, out of nowhere, the

5 Ways to Help Our Family…Will You Pick 2?

The letter ‘N’, or the Arabic symbol pictured here, is used by ISIS to mark the homes of the Christians they are murdering, capturing, and driving from Iraq. The Islamic terrorist group chose this letter because it stands for the Nazarene,that is Jesus of Nazareth. It represents the One the Iraqi Christians claim as their

How To Know God’s Will (Thank you Mother Mary!)

Image Credit: Konstantinos Mavroudis via CC   I am reading through the Christmas narrative in my Bible as I work on a Christmas writing project. It feels kind of weird to do it in August. But hey, if my little brother Andrew can record a Christmas album in August, I can write a Christmas book.

Super Jesus

Photo Credit: Emily Carlin (CreativeCommons)   In the late 1930’s Superman made his comic book debut, and for the last seven decades readers and moviegoers of all ages have been thrilled by his use of super-human capabilities to rid the world of evil. The idea of Superman resonates deeply with the American psyche. Though a

Extreme Hospitality (The Third Thing I Learned in Egypt about being a Christian)

 Image courtesy of Johnny Wilson at CC   I attend and work at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, and part of the church’s mission is to exhibit extreme hospitality. The church does it well. In fact, it was this genuine hospitality that brought my wife and me to the church in the first place and part

We’re Not Very Good at Being the Church (The Second Thing I Learned in Egypt about Being a Christian)

Last week I posted the first lesson I learned about being a Christian while I was in Egypt. Believe it or not, it was this: Political Unrest is Good for the Church. (click here to read what I mean)  The second lesson I recently learned in Egypt about being a Christian is… Lesson #2 –