I am preaching on a passage in the gospel of Luke this week, where it is recorded that Jesus cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue in Capernaum.  It doesn’t happen in the Upside-Down.  It doesn’t happen in the ‘spiritual realm’.  It happens on planet Earth.  In Galilee, in the town of…

I listen to a handful of podcasts most weeks, and two of them highlighted the problems of ai (you may note that this is not in all caps as usual, keep reading to see why) within the past 24 hours.  Both of them spoke to the same issue, and this got me thinking. In one…

Every time another church is attacked I go deep into what ‘ifs’. As a pastor of a flock, I am called to care for my flock.  But the metaphor gets cloudy.  Am I supposed to wrestle with bears and lions?  Am I called in any sense to physically preserve my sheep and protect them from…

She forgave him!?  I saw it live on TV.  I heard it through speakers piped into my living room.  Others were in the room who could verify what she had just said.  I’ve gone back and watched the clip a dozen times.  And it still amazes me.  It still shocks me.  Forgiveness will never be…

I used the word ‘worldview’ in my title instead of ideology, because worldview strikes me as more comprehensive. And that is the point. I do not imagine that there are many people (though I tremble at the thought that there are some) who set out to embrace death, who hope to some day plunge off…

The whole nation seemed to be united behind one thing for the past week or so . . . Two people in a spotlight at a Coldplay concert. Now I have a confession . . . I like Coldplay.

I am preaching my way through 2 Timothy and I encountered this verse this week in my deeper dive for my sermon.
2 Timothy 3:9

One of the largest task of any leader is to clarify the answer to the question “why!?” I have been listening to the book “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Leif participated in many of the missions to regain the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

War is a a huge concept found in a tiny word. If words carried the gravity of their meaning, the word for the concept of ‘war’ ought to be something like 17 syllables. But this is English so “infinitesimal” means really small and “big” means large. I woke up thinking about war this morning, because…

I have recently been made aware of a particular woman with a large following who has made a list of unapproved theologians and pastors and authors.  Of course, she is the common thread.  Her list includes Daily Grace Co.  Her list includes John Piper.  Her list includes Tim Keller.  Her list includes the Bible Project.…

I often tell people in my role as a pastor that we need to keep reading the Bible in order to keep exercising our faith.  I think many of us have a tendency to think of faith as a static thing.  Either I have it, or I don’t.  But faith, as evidence of things not…

Several years ago, I was more in touch with contemporary culture.  I would blog nearly every week on Thursdays and I used my blog as an opportunity to exegete our culture, much like I use my sermons on Sunday to exegete a passage of the Bible. But something shifted, and I am not sure if…

God has created a world in which we experience time as past, present, and future. I cannot conceive of any other type of world, but I’m sure God can. For some reason, God seems interested in the progress of His creation. We learn from the past. We live in the present. And we anticipate the…