THE GOSPEL IS OFFENSIVE
There is something about the gospel that is inherently offensive. I don’t like saying that, and you may not like hearing it. But it is incontestable. The gospel puts some people off.
Take David and Roland, two high school friends of mine. David was what you might call a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Jun 22, 2011
WE GET OUR PURPOSE FROM HIM
I have three watches. They had no meaning until I bought them; they get their meaning from me. I assign each one its meaning and value. I put this watch on a shelf as a showpiece; it's my show watch. This watch I wear for informal occasions and when working in the
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 22, 2011
THE BELLS TOLL FOR SOMEONE ELSE
We began the week with the story of the Chicago nightclub fire in which 21 people were killed as they rushed to the exit. The club had already been cited for overcrowding and other safety violations--like not enough doors and windows. What happened was that a
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 21, 2011
Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind:
"Openness and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 20, 2011
SPIRITUAL CARCINOGENS
When the Challenger went down nearly 20 years ago, the whole country went around draped in a dark cloud of mourning. Soon the shock gave way to outrage and scandal when it was discovered that cost-cutting and
carelessness components that didn’t quite meet the required
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 20, 2011
New Testament scholar D. A. Carson says:
"If I have strong views and articulate them, I am, by definition, intolerant. . . . The group that [claims it is right] is no longer perceived as standing for something and
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 18, 2011
FORGIVENESS: LIKE A BELL TOLLING
Corrie ten Boom once told of being able to forget
a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally, she cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. She wrote this about
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 18, 2011
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WHAT IS "DAILY BREAD"?
Martin Luther wrote in 1529:
"What does daily bread mean? Everything that nourishes our body and meets its needs, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, yard, fields, cattle, money, possessions, a devout spouse, devout children, devout employees, devout and faithful
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POWER AND "KING OF THE HILL"
When I was a kid, we used to play a game called "King of the Hill." Everyone would get together and choose some place to be the "hill." Sometimes we were lucky enough to have a dirt mound to play on, but not very often. It might be a bed or a sofa, unless, of course,
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Contributed by Terry Barnhill on Jun 15, 2011
THE TRUE BLESSING
When God blessed Abraham, He blessed him so that he could be a blessing to all nations. To be a true blessing to others requires that we share with them the power of God’s transforming Truth.
If you give food to a man who is trapped in a pit, they are still trapped in that
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WHEN YOU CAN'T FIGHT, PRAY
Nancy told me the other day that, not too long ago, she overheard Graham praying. Here he was, near the end of his life, beset with a failing body more than nine decades old, and what was he praying for? His country. Your country. Mine. He fought for this country. He
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Curry Pikkaart on Jun 13, 2011
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FOUR WEEKS AWAY FROM THE SPIRIT
An Anglican bishop was asked to preach at a conference in England. For many weeks he did not respond to the invitation. Finally, the corresponding secretary for the conference wrote him a note which said, "We must know if you are coming. We need to make our plans."
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 11, 2011
NOT MUCH OF A MAN...?
A weary truck driver who pulled his rig into an all-night truck stop late one summer evening in Broken Bow, NE. He was tired and hungry. The waitress had just served him when three tough looking, leather-jacketed bikers of the Hell's Angels type decided to give him a hard
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Presbyterian/Reformed
Contributed by Alison Bucklin on Jun 11, 2011
SEXUALITY, SELF, AND IDENTITY
Michael Foucault, in The History of Sexuality: "Sexuality is a word that now serves a purpose like the word soul did in the Middle Ages. In that period, people believed that one's soul united the various aspects of human identity and gave significance to that
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Presbyterian/Reformed
SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE
Back in 1991, I went on a mission trip to the former Soviet Union. Twenty-or-so of us arrived on a snowy November day in Samara, a city of more than a million people located on the Volga River. We were there for about ten days, and our mission was to help start a
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Presbyterian/Reformed