We live in a culture where tolerance is the highest virtue (that is, if your views line up with the current cultural narrative; if they don’t, then they are not tolerated; they are canceled—but that’s a different article). All (progressive) views must be tolerated, really celebrated. When celebrities “come out of the closet” and declare that they are gay or lesbian or transsexual or non-binary or whatever other self-determined version of sexual identity they have devised, their view must be accepted, even applauded.

This glorification of tolerance even influences Christmas. Continue reading →

Most every morning, I walk up the mountain that is somewhat beside my house. I walk up the main road about 30 yards and then I turn into a development of several houses. This road basically climbs its way about a mile up a mountain, with eight or ten houses on both sides of the street, until you get to the top. I take Dixie, the wonder-dog, our 12-year-old Basset hound. She enjoys it, and I enjoy the company. I take my prayer list with me, but I can only pray as I walk back down. I’m too winded to pray as I walk up! Continue reading →

I just reviewed some of my previous articles. I seem to write quite often on suffering. I don’t really know why. At any reasonable estimation, I live a fairly comfortable life. I don’t have a debilitating physical condition. I’m not battling cancer, or anything like that. I have a comfortable home. My wife loves me, my children love me, my dog loves me. But I tend to think about suffering. I tend to think about why things aren’t they way they are supposed to be. I don’t have a debilitating physical condition, but I know people that do, and it seems wrong and unfair. I’m not battling cancer, but I know people that are, and it seems wrong and unfair. I have a comfortable home, but there are believers in Christ all over the world that don’t. I have a wonderful marriage and family, but I know too many believers that don’t—spouses where betrayal has occurred, children where rebellion has occurred, parents where abuse has occurred. Life is hard; there’s no getting around it. (Your dog, however, will always love you.) Continue reading →

Suffering puts us in a precarious position. It is bad enough to suffer. But then, if we are not careful, suffering can lead us into sin. Suffering can cause us to doubt the character and goodness of God. A good example of this can be seen in the life of John the Baptist. At some point in his life and ministry, he was put in prison. This is often what happens when you tell King Herod that he can’t marry his half-brother’s wife, which is what John did! Herod put John in prison, and while he was there, he began to wonder if it was all worth it. (Some time later, Herod would have John beheaded. At his own birthday party, Herod promised “to give her whatever she might ask” in response to the dancing of his stepdaughter. By the suggestion of her mom, she wanted the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and Herod complied.) He sends some of his own disciples to Jesus. “I’ve heard about some of the things that you have done. Are you the one that we have been waiting for, or should we keep looking?” Jesus assured John that he was most certainly the long-awaited Messiah. But John wondered. He had been in prison for some time (and he would eventually die in that prison).

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I taught an adult education class recently at my church on the subject of the kingdom of God. I’ve never really studied this topic. In fact, I don’t normally think of myself being part of the kingdom of God. Most of us don’t. When we think of being a Christian, we don’t usually think that that means we are part of a kingdom. We may think of it secondarily, but it’s not the first thing that jumps into our mind. But oddly enough, that is the primary way that Jesus refers to what we call being a Christian. Jesus never calls people to “become Christians.” He calls people to be his disciples, to be his followers. But he calls them to follow him as the King. Matthew tells us that when Jesus began his ministry on earth, “he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom” (4:23).

We often think of being a Christian as a way of life, or maybe a spiritual transaction that has occurred, or a set of rules or a code of conduct by which we live, or at best a relationship with God. But at its root, being a Christian is being part of God’s kingdom. Continue reading →

Life is hard. We keep wanting it to work better, feel better, be better, but in many ways, life is just hard. On a good day, there is always something else to think about and plan for. On a hard day, well . . . it is just hard. We lose sleep, or we wake up with our head full of worries or our heart pounding. We can’t relax, and we don’t know why. Our stomach gets all gnarled up. We can’t focus. And the sources for our anxiety are endless. We worry about our future and our finances. We have fears over our children’s safety and their spiritual life. We get discouraged because of jobs that feel futile and seem like a dead-end. There’s death and disease in those that we love. And this is just discouragement over things in our life situation, things that are simply part of living in a fallen world. There is also discouragement that comes from our own sins and failures, regrets over the past, hurts that we have caused and we can’t undo.

So, what is the source of our worry and anxiety and discouragement? Continue reading →

Sometime back, I was walking my dogs. I try to take a walk up the mountain each morning. It is good for my heart, and the two basset hounds, Dixie and Belle, the wonder-dogs, seem to put up with it, though their natural inclination is to sleep. It is really the only exercise I get, and so my goal is to get my heart rate up and keep it up for about 30 minutes. I walk up a street that has a handful of houses on it, and as I walked past a particular house that morning, a dog came racing out of the front-yard. Continue reading →

Let me ask you something. Why do we pray? We pray because we cannot do life on our own. We need help. But I also believe that that’s also the reason that we don’t pray. We don’t pray because we don’t really feel that we need any help. You see, for most of us, we only think about praying when we are up against something that we cannot do or cannot figure out. And that’s good. That’s exactly what God wants. But the problem is this. We end up reserving prayer for the stuff that we can’t do, and we don’t pray about the stuff that we think we can do. And therein lies the problem. Continue reading →

I am intrigued by the story of Jesus’ birth from Matthew. Most of the time, we read the nativity story from Luke, and it includes all the familiar characters: angels and shepherds and sheep and a manger and no place to sleep that night. But Matthew’s account is completely different—no sheep, no shepherds, no angels. It almost seems un-Christmaslike. How can you have a Christmas story without sheep and angels!? Continue reading →

One of the most familiar stories in the Bible is the parable told by Jesus of the lost son. It is most often called the parable of the Prodigal Son. A man had two sons. The younger of the two wanted his inheritance upon demand. So, the father did what it took to give him that money not upon his own death, when one would normally receive and inheritance, but immediately. And then the son took that money and squandered it. The Bible says that he spent it on “reckless living.” Basically, he took it and had a good time with it. He went to Las Vegas and gambled it away, spent it on alcohol and lavish meals, and enjoyed whatever pleasure that he could afford. Continue reading →

We all have weaknesses, things we don’t do well or things we can’t do at all. I can’t dunk a basketball. I’ve always wanted to be able to dunk a basketball. I still have a recurring dream that I am dunking a basketball (I really do). I used to have a love/hate relationship with Spud Webb. For those of you who are not familiar with the finer points of pro basketball history, Continue reading →

Kim and I pray together every night before we go to bed. We pray over our family and our personal needs and over friends that are going through hard times, such health issues or interpersonal struggles or financial difficulty. And it seems that lately our prayer list has grown. I don’t think that means anything. Life is not harder now than before. And I don’t think that we have become more aware of people’s hurts and pains. I’m probably just as self-focused now as I ever have been. But no matter, we have a large list of hurting people that we lift up to the Lord in prayer.

And it seems to never end. Continue reading →

You know, if we are honest, a lot of the stories of the Bible are simply hard to believe. Bodies of water that split in half so that people can walk on dry land, city walls that fall down because people scream and yell and blow trumpets and bust clay pots, a woman’s flour jar that never empties no matter how much bread she makes . . . these things run up against our logic. Water that comes from rocks upon demand, a child’s lunch made to feed over 5000 people, a man walking on top of the water . . . things like this seem less like fact and more like fiction. Lame people walking, blind people seeing, people being raised from the dead . . . these things seem like they should come from a child’s bedtime story book rather than from the Bible. The Bible doesn’t begin with the words, “Once upon a time in a land far, far away,” but with stories like these, it seems like it could.
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My pastor is preaching through the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Though I have traveled a lot this Spring, I was there when he preached on the end of chapter 3. Genesis 3 is the horrible climax of the creation story. Adam and Eve were perfect in every way and were living in a perfect world—no sin, no corruption, no failure. Everything about their life was fulfilling and satisfying and complete. They lacked for nothing. The last verse of chapter 2 sums it up well. They were naked but not ashamed— Continue reading →

Most mornings, I walk up the mountain that is right behind our house. Now, there’s no “mountain-climbing” here. I’m not using ropes and climbing shoes and special gear. Nope, it is just me and the two Basset Hounds, Dixie and Belle, the wonder dogs, walking up a street behind my house. But there’s a pretty good incline to it and when you get to the top there’s a great view of the north Georgia mountains, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m climbing a mountain. I wish that it had a name, like Foster Mountain, or something classic like that, but I don’t know that it does, or if it does, I don’t know what it is. In reality, I’m just walking up Highland Road, but it would sound so much better if could say that I walk up Foster Mountain every morning. Continue reading →

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

This is the great prophecy of Aslan from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan, the lion, is Lewis’ Christ-figure, and the prophecy speaks of his coming. I love these words. Continue reading →

Most every morning I take my two basset hounds, Dixie and Belle, the wonderdogs, for a walk. Really I should say that they take me for a walk! I need the exercise more than they do and they are kind enough to go with me while I huff and puff and sweat up the mountain and back down. Right behind my house, is a street with several homes on it and it winds its way up to the top of a mountain. I wish I knew the name of it, but you can see it when you drive down The Orchard Road to our house. My walk is about a mile up and a mile back down that mountain, and I’m glad that I don’t live at the top. It is easier going down after I’ve been up, than going up after I’ve been down! Continue reading →

Our world is full of tragedy. Natural disasters occur in this country and across the globe: earthquakes kill hundreds, tornadoes level homes, wild fires destroy thousands of acres. Disease hits us, or those we love, and makes this life seem tenuous and fragile. And then we read of another mass shooting, in a school or a theater or a church, and we are shook to our core again. In fact, I just did an online search on “mass shootings,” and found a whole website devoted to keeping statistics on this. It listed a hundred just since January, and that is not counting terrorism in this country and abroad.

I think back to the events of December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Continue reading →

I love Christmas music. I was listening recently to Michael Card’s Christmas cd entitled, The Promise. It is very good. The last song is entitled Immanuel. I have always loved the concept of Immanuel. The word means, “God with us.” There is something completely unique about Christianity among all of the other of the world’s religions. Continue reading →

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). I’ve always loved the book of 1 Peter. When you spend 60+ sermons preaching through a book, you can’t help but grow a special fondness of it. In this particular verse, Peter reminds us that the passions of our flesh wage war against our soul.

Let me get right to the point. Continue reading →