BIBLE: LIFE SUPPORT
I didn’t always go to church; in fact, I didn’t start attending anywhere regularly until I was in the ninth grade. But I wasn’t exactly a stranger to church. Occasionally, this friend or that one would invite me to go to Sunday School.
I remember one time -- I must have been
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Presbyterian/Reformed
IMITATING EVERYTHING
The most influential person in my life was a man by the name of Charles. He was the pastor of the church where I went as a teenager. You may have heard me talk about Charles before, and, if you have, you may remember that he taught me how to drive, he helped me learn a trade
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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GIVING BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO
One Saturday I was working in the yard, and I came walking around the corner of my house. And there was a boy there, on a bicycle. He was wearing Scout uniform, and I’m guessing he must have been about ten or eleven years old. It didn’t take me long to figure out what he
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Presbyterian/Reformed
I remember years ago, when I was the pastor in another city, we had a man in our church that worked in a local processing plant. His name was Doug. One day, a new guy – a fellow by the name of Mike – showed up to work there, and Doug got acquainted with him and invited him to come to our
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Presbyterian/Reformed
A GIFT OF THE WORD
When I was a teenager, my pastor gave me a little pocket New Testament, bound in red leather. And inside, on the flyleaf, he had written a note. And with the note was a Scripture citation: Romans 12:1-2. I couldn’t wait to turn to that passage and read what it said. If you know
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Presbyterian/Reformed
THINK STEPS, NOT PROGRAMS
In his book, Seven Practices of Effective Ministry, Andy Stanley writes: "Think Steps, Not Programs" (p. 88). The idea is this: Instead of having a strategic vision that focuses on programs, you have a strategic vision of a people-process, a pathway that takes people from
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Presbyterian/Reformed
TRAINING IN GODLINESS
Our daughter-in-law has participated at times in triathlon competitions. The triathlon is an endurance event in which you swim a certain distance, ride your bike a certain distance, and finally, and without resting, run a certain distance. It is a very demanding test of your
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Presbyterian/Reformed
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CONVERTED NOT ONCE, BUT OFTEN
A person of no less stature than Ruth Graham, the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary and the wife of a world-famous evangelist, struggled with this idea of a "moment of conversion." She was raised in the faith and knew that she was secure in Christ, and yet she
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Presbyterian/Reformed
BUECHNER'S UNIQUE LOOK AT FORGIVENESS
Frederick Buechner is a Presbyterian minister and an author, and he has delightful little book called The Alphabet of Grace. It is somewhat like a dictionary of terms that people of faith commonly use, only Mr. Buechner offers some very uncommon reflections on
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Presbyterian/Reformed
NO REST FOR THE UNFORGIVING
Somewhere in the recesses of my memory is the recollection of a movie. It’s a Western; I know that much. I can’t remember the title of the movie, but I remember the story line.
The hero is a law man, and he is transporting a convicted murderer across the treacherous
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Presbyterian/Reformed
REVENGE: A LAZY FORM OF GRIEF
In the 2005 film, The Interpreter, Nicole Kidman plays the role of Sylvia Broome, a United Nations translator who overhears an assassination plot. In one scene in the movie, Sylvia talks about revenge and mercy. She speaks of a primitive tribe and a tradition they
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N. T. Wright is the bishop of Durham and a New Testament scholar without equal in my judgment. Bishop Wright describes the kingdom as God’s “ultimate future and urgent present.” What does he mean?
He means what so many others mean when they say the kingdom is both now and not yet. There is a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Larry Lea, who used to serve as a pastor in Rockwall, Texas, has a course on the Lord’s Prayer. When he teaches people how to pray this petition -- “Your kingdom come” -- he asks them to draw an imaginary circle around themselves and not to emerge from that circle until all their priorities are in
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Presbyterian/Reformed
PRAYER AND CHOPPING VEGETABLES
Jan and I were watching a cooking show the other day -- Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa, I think it was -- and I commented on how Ina chops vegetables. In this instance, she was chopping parsley, and she held the knife in one hand while resting her other hand on top
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Presbyterian/Reformed
This past week, another and I hosted a Hospice luncheon at which the speaker was a woman named Elaine Magruder. Elaine is a nurse who lives in Midland, Texas, and she tells how God sent her to Vietnam to start the first hospice program there. To hear her story is truly inspirational.
Elaine says
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Occasionally, I read a web log by a young man who gives only his first name, which is Justin. In a recent post on his blog, which he calls “Uban Idealist,” he says this. He says, “For a long time my reaction to seeing [the broken] areas in my life has been to work hard on them. Try to act more
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Presbyterian/Reformed
In his book, Metamorpha, Kyle Strobel tells about a friend of his whose name is Cassie. Cassie was a first-year seminary student whose view of God had never been challenged. Suddenly, she found herself in a setting in which it seemed to her that her image of God was being dismantled. It was as
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Imagine how surprising Matthew’s life was to him. One day he’s sitting at the tax collector’s booth, busily engaged in taking whatever he can get from people. That night he’s got Jesus in his house, throwing a dance party. And the next day -- the very next day -- he’s in the house of the ruler of
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Jesus compared two builders, one "a wise man," the other "a foolish man." Both these men built houses. One house endured the storm; the other house did not. And the emphasis that we must not overlook is this: that the storm pressed upon the wise man's house as fiercely as it did upon the house
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Presbyterian/Reformed
The word “obedience” has its origin in the Latin audire, which means “to hear.” Obaudire is the term. As a point of further interest, the word “absurd” comes from a root which means to be deaf. The absurd
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