For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace.” Reflect on these words. This simple sentence offers a critical truth. We can do nothing...

The apostle Peter provides a good example of how easily people of faith miss the point. We sometimes get so caught up in the pageantry and excitement that we lose sight...

Go from your country. . . . ” In our postmodern, transitory, global community, this command doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Social media and instantaneous communication make it possible...

Years ago I attended two churches in the same community. One congregation had about 3,000 members, while the other boasted just over 300. Both congregations were having celebrations of their ministries....

This psalm gave my Grandmother Dortie great confidence and comfort. She could recite it by heart, and it empowered her to cope with everything life threw at her. Through desperate times...

Today’s psalm calls us to confess our wrongdoings to God lest these unconfessed wrongdoings eat us up from the inside out. The psalmist says when he failed to confess, he experienced...

At the end of Jesus’ forty-day fast in the wilderness, he is starving. So not surprisingly, the devil’s first temptation invites Jesus to turn stones into bread—not only for food but...

Jesus begins his ministry with a forty-day fast in the wilderness, paralleling the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness after their rescue from slavery in Egypt. They faced many trials in...

Understanding today’s passage depends on remembering our single humanity. Adam and Eve, standing in for us all, chose not just sin but death itself. Our problem ever since is not that...

Psalm 51 has been the psalm for the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, since the church’s beginnings. It is a prayer of deep repentance, when we find ourselves able to...