Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 23, 2009
FAITH: REASON AT REST
The late Manley Beasley defined faith as a "reason at rest with God." To me, that's powerful, but it hits me even harder when I remember that he went on to say, "Faith is dependency upon God, and this God-dependency only begins when self-dependency ends." And what do we see
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 16, 2009
SIN KEYED OUT BY JESUS
What is this idea of "covering" or "hiding" sin? It means that there are circumstances where God will refuse to see our sin. I like to picture that as being like the technique used in video and film. It’s called the chromakey technique and requires filming in front of a blue
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 16, 2009
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FORGIVEN, FORGIVEN, FORGIVEN...
I once read a marvelous story about a country doctor in Scotland who had a very poor practice. Although his patients would pay him in eggs, chickens, vegetables at harvest, and meat at slaughtering time, his huge ledger book would contain many names, symptoms,
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 7, 2009
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HIDE AND SEEK WITH GOD
This week I have been hammered by the immensity of what it means to "abandon," "forsake," or "leave alone" the omnipresent God, God who is everywhere. How is that possible? It is ONLY possible if God allows us to leave, allows us to turn our back upon God Himself.
Yes, it
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 7, 2009
CONFESSION: SIN HURTS GOD
If you’re part of a big family, you probably remember those times when a little nephew would come up and slug his older uncles. The nephew’s mother probably chided him, but I can almost hear the uncle say, "No! That’s all right. The kid’s got to flex his muscles once in a
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS
In Chicago’s elevated train stations, they hung phony owls from the ceilings of some of the stations to discourage the pigeons. I can remember seeing pigeons right up next to the owls, blithely ignoring them. Now, there are wire spikes everywhere the pigeons might roost up
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
IDOLATRY IS LIKE POISONING
More than 25 years ago (1982), seven residents of the Greater Chicago area made an assumption that proved fatal. They all took a dose of Extra Strength Tylenol® that had been laced with potassium cyanide. What they thought was medicine proved to be poison. This crime,
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Mar 2, 2009
LOOK UP
I love those scenes in action films, comics, or cartoons where you have one set of bad guys pursuing the hero from one end of a tunnel or corridor and another set of bad guys is converging from the other side. You know the hero is in between them, but when the groups of pursuers meet in
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 27, 2009
"Give the Bible to the people, unadulterated, pure, unaltered, unexplained, uncheapened, and then see it work through the whole nature. It is very difficult indeed for a man or for a boy who knows the Scriptures ever to get away from it. It follows him like the memory of his mother. It haunts him
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 27, 2009
I am reminded of Herman Melville’s description of the pulpit in Moby Dick. It’s actually a description of a real pulpit in the Whaler’s Chapel that a Jewish friend went out of his way to show me in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It reads:
Its paneled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows,
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 27, 2009
IS GOD IN RESIDENCE?
I once saw a poster of a valentine-shaped heart with a castle on top of it. There was a flag with a slogan, oversized and coming out of the top of the castle. The slogan read: "Joy is the banner flown from the heart when the King is in residence."
Well, stupid me, I didn’t
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 23, 2009
A FATHER'S DUTY NEVER ENDS
I went to a Saturday matinee showing of that great Sidney Poitier movie, "Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?" and I reveled in that confrontation between Poitier’s world-renowned doctor character and his inner-city postman father. The postman father plays the "I sacrificed
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 22, 2009
I’m sort of surprised about the timetable for Philip’s journey. God commands him to get up and depart about noon. It reminds me of Robbie O’ Connell, an Irish musician who lives in the U.S., when he went back to Ireland to chase down some authentic folk songs that hadn’t yet been recorded. Since
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 22, 2009
Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as having said, “It is the cause, not the death, which makes the martyr.” So, I ask you, what is the difference between the martyrdom in the early church and these would-be martyrs to false causes? First of all, the early Christians were not deliberately seeking their
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 22, 2009
Imagine, if you will, considering the fuel that runs most of our society, a gasoline station along the metaphorical road of life. It has two large signs that can be seen from all around. One sign says, “Come on in! Your bill is already paid!” That’s grace—something paid before you ever reach the
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 20, 2009
3-D THEOLOGY
When people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins claim that they can prove that God doesn’t exist, they are making an arrogant mistake. Pardon me while I draw an example from modern animation. When I was a child, the most glorious cartoons were 2-dimensional animations where
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 20, 2009
In a way, as Pastor Rod Parsley observed in Culturally Incorrect: How Clashing Worldviews Affect Your Future, today’s worldview isn’t that different from the Sadducees of Jesus’ day. Parsley engages in a bit of word play that goes like this (The Sadducees did not
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 18, 2009
IN OUR MIDST
I remember being in a meeting with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner where he noted that the human skin is not smooth. If we look at it under a microscope, the surface would vaguely resemble the coastline of California with all its coves, bays, and nooks. Then, he observed that molecules from
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 17, 2009
The shadow of your smile
When you are gone
Will color all my dreams
And light the dawn…
The year was 1965. The movie was The Sandpiper. The stars were Elizabeth Taylor as the seductress and the late Richard Burton as the Episcopal priest she seduced. The sentiment in the song is that our
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Contributed by Johnny Wilson on Feb 17, 2009
By the way, I got a prayer handkerchief in the mail about two-three weeks ago. It was a fundraising approach by an interdenominational group and it cited Acts 19 as its affirmation. They missed the point! Even as the people snuggling together under Peter’s shadow missed the point. The power—the
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