In the 7th Harry Potter story, The Deathly Hallows, there is a continual tug-of-war for Harry’s attention. He has been instructed by his now dead mentor, Professor Dumbledor, to seek out these items known as horcruxes. The evil villain Voldemort has placed a portion of himself in seven of these, and in order to defeat him, all seven must... Continue Reading →
An inscription was found on a stone by archeologists in the Libyan Desert left there by a Roman soldier. It read, “there are two things to be sought, love and power, and nobody has both.” Ravi Zacharias comments on this quote saying that it is almost exactly right, but it is in fact dead wrong. When we... Continue Reading →
I sometimes hear people express a desire to return to how the church used to be in biblical times. In the popular imagination, the church was pristine and pure in its early days, and now we have a corrupted form of it. But it seems that such desires tend to look at the church as it existed... Continue Reading →
“Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” If that is true, how many of us are suffering from malnourishment? The symptoms are clear when we are. The fruit of the Spirit becomes less evident in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are in... Continue Reading →
What is most essential in the Christian life – thinking or feelings? The story is told of a college library that sinks a certain amount each year because the architect failed to account for the weight of the books inside the library. And while this story may well be legend rather than fact, the core of it... Continue Reading →
Yesterday in my sermon on Acts 17 we encountered the Stoic philosophers. These Stoics were pantheists, that is, they believed in the all encompassing world soul. That God was everything, and everything was God. This is very similar to our modern New Age movement. We hear it a lot in how people refer to “the universe” as if... Continue Reading →
What you hope in determines your now. That was the central point in yesterday’s sermon. But it is very clear when reading 1 Peter, that the full content is indescribable. 1 Peter 1:3-4 tells us that we have been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance... Continue Reading →
In my previous blog post I wrote about the issue of the Gospel needing to be understood in a more comprehensive fashion. Rather than reducing it simply to the plan of salvation, it should be expanded into a story about God becoming King in and through Jesus. So, more than just a story about forgiveness of sins,... Continue Reading →
So I have been doing some thinking on the Gospel, and I thought I would flesh out those ideas here. What I intend to do is write a series of blog posts, each developing on the former to provide a more thorough understanding of the Gospel. In these blog posts I am assuming that what has... Continue Reading →
