When Love Comes Out
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 At the end of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he widens the lens a little from talking about unity. While we need to be unified in Christ and be fools in the process, it...
View ArticleLove Over Legalism
Galatians 5:1-6 Life is ordered by rules. Most of us are comfortable with some degree of black and white. The objective of rules is to make society orderly. The church is also ordered, but not in the...
View ArticlePeace Is Not a Last Resort
Ephesians 4:1-7 Over the years, there have been many attempts to establish peace in the Middle East. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and it entails much more than an absence of conflict. It...
View ArticleThe Call of Creation: All For One
Psalm 133:1-3 When Eve and Adam ate the apple and were expelled from the garden, God set in motion a plan to reconcile all of humanity to Godself. It is natural to wonder why God would not just...
View ArticleShallow End Believers
1 Corinthians 3:1-10 There were plenty of opportunities for me to learn to swim—I just never learned. At a campground that I attended as a child, my time at the lake was spent playing in the shallow...
View ArticleFoundation Problems Are No Joke
1 Corinthians 3:11-15 My son Alex’s house had foundation problems. The house was settling and becoming unstable because of age and unsteady soil. The interior doors didn’t close properly. Cracks...
View ArticlePartnering Gets More Done
1 Corinthians 3:16-23 A county fair held a horse-pulling contest. The first-place horse ended up moving a sled weighing 4,500 pounds. The second-place horse pulled 4,000 pounds. The owner of those two...
View ArticleJesus: The Good News
1 Corinthians 4:1-7 Bad news. It seems like that’s all we hear these days. It might be a devastating hurricane, another shooting, political mudslinging, or trusted Christian leaders failing....
View ArticleOne Point Is Needed
1 Corinthians 16:12-24 To be the church that God calls us to be—not going through the motions, not playing church, not even seeing a few good things happen every now and then—but to do great things...
View ArticleLessons From Wrestling
Romans 12:3-8 Wrestling fans know a “Tag Team Match” is when two wrestlers team up to wrestle two other wrestlers. Only one wrestler is allowed in the ring at a time. When the non-participating...
View ArticleClosed Church Lessons
Psalm 90:12-17 The little church that I attended as a child never grew much. It tried. There were Sunday school drives, revivals, and a “Christian” clown was hired once. There were “sing-spirations,”...
View ArticleKnown By God
1 Corinthians 8:1-6 I’m sitting next my daughter’s sleeping cat. Although she denies it, I feel deep in my heart that she prayed and asked God to send her that cat. She probably realized the only...
View ArticleUnnecessary Temptations
1 Corinthians 8:7-13 Recently, an associate at the local grocery store was loading my groceries into my car. He began to chat about the weather and when the his shift ended. Then he volunteered...
View ArticleDeclarations of War
Romans 14:1-7 It’s such a wonderful thing that God created each and every one of us so differently. Every human being is a fresh new canvas covered in God’s divine fingerprints. So many varying sizes,...
View ArticleSilver Linings
Romans 14:8-14 I often try to find some rationale for the opposition’s actions, even if the prevailing opinion declares the actions to be not the smartest. They had a rough morning or perhaps...
View ArticleDivine Guidance
Romans 14:15-23 Conflict is messy. It is rough and exhausting. Conflict knows no boundaries. Conflict isn’t seasonal, nor is it restricted to a particular time of day. I don’t know anyone who would...
View ArticleSaturating Life’s Messes
1 Peter 4:7-11 I have a rather high appreciation for a certain brand of blue dishwashing soap and sodium bicarbonate. These two items mixed with a bit of hot water and some patience covers a...
View ArticleUnified
John 17:20-26 Weddings have historically included a moment in the ceremony to symbolize the two becoming one. Tradition used to dictate that this was done through candle lighting, but the purpose...
View ArticleReligious Eating
1 Corinthians 11:17-22 The Corinthian church was struggling to understand its identity. Corinth was a port city. The church, like the city, was full of people of various ethnicities, languages,...
View ArticleRemembering Jesus
1 Corinthians 11:23-27 In her excellent book, The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge points out that remembering is not merely an act of recounting an event. When we ask people to remember us in our...
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