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.
Continue reading →

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 →

Years ago, we had a dog. I’ve always loved animals, and dogs particularly, and this was a special dog. She wasn’t our first pet as a family—the first one was sort of a trial-run dog—but she was the one that lasted the longest. Her name was Gracie—Gracie, the Gospel-Dog. With a name like Gracie, the Gospel-Dog, there has to be a story behind it, and there is.

About 15 years ago, Continue reading →

Christmas is a celebration. And that is appropriate. It should be. We celebrate the advent of our Savior. God has come to us in the person of Jesus, and that is worthy of celebration. But we have turned the celebration into glitz and glamour. Now we have television specials—Christmas at Rockefeller Center. Now we have commercialization and the task of “finding the perfect gift.” Now we have lights and decorations and Clark Griswold. And I’m the world’s worst. You should see the front of my house. There are probably enough lights to land a small plane on our driveway!

But in reality, Christmas is not about celebrating the glitz and glamour, and the bright and shiny, it is about celebrating the insignificant and the ordinary and the outcast. Continue reading →

If Christianity is about anything, it is about forgiveness. Christianity is not about getting better. It is not about tips and techniques to help you yell at your children less, become financially secure, or become more fulfilled in life. And it is not about feeling better. It is not about warm fuzzies, or sentimental sayings, or being nice to people. Nor it is not about knowing more, or better. It is not about learning more or thinking better, having thoughts or even beliefs that are true. Christianity is not about doing better or feeling better or thinking better. It is about being forgiven. Continue reading →

Some years ago, I was at an elementary school Awards Day. It was the end of Buddy’s third grade year and it was Third Grade Awards Day. If you have been to something like this, then you know what they are all about. All the third-graders were seated on one side of the gym, and all of the camera-laden parents were on the other side. The teachers and the principal were up on the stage and one by one each teacher would come to the microphone and give awards to her students. Each third-grade class would come up when it was their turn and the children would line up at the side of the stage. Then their teacher would call each student by name and read off the awards as he or she came up to receive them. It was quite an exciting affair. If you could measure the importance of an event by the number of video cameras involved, no presidential news conference could hold a candle to Awards Day. Continue reading →