A Christianity that does not have as its primary focus the deepening of passions for God is a false Christianity, no matter how zealously it seeks conversions or how forcefully it advocates righteous behavior.

Jesus is supposed to be the Alpha and the Omega, but in the Bible he’s neither. He’s stuck in the middle like the letter Q.

I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth “home.” Before you know...

All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology...

If the good news is an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about somebody who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

Since my money is God’s money, every spending decision I make is a spiritual decision.

Are you a Nehemiah and pull others hair out (Neh 13:25) or are you an Ezra who pulled out his own hair (Ezra 9:3), both were grieved over godless conduct or do you care at...

Never give up praying! God loves to hear you call upon Him. He will answer you in His beautiful timing.

The Bible is the greatest book ever written.

I recommend you don’t attend the wheat and chaff bonfire.

The shadowy side of real life is ignored, and Western Christianity provides us with nothing which can be used to interpret it. Thus the young men of the West are unable to deal with the...

The New Testament was not written by historians with the critical spirit of a Thucydides or a Polybius, but by men moved by the fervor of faith. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that it...

Don’t let your personal desires distort the standards established in God’s Word.

I wonder what could happen if self-confessed followers of Jesus surrendered our human powers, and our desires for power, and began to celebrate openly our human weakness in exchange for the experience of Christ as...

I wanted to write it on paper and fold it up in a box to remind myself, the next time I couldn’t see anything but mountains ahead, that where there’s a mountain, there’s always a...

Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old.And who else could this be, who goes off down the green path,Carrying his sandals, and singing?

I suspect the next 10 years will be years of turmoil and hardship the globe over, and with that will come a surge in a certain kind of American patriotism. Therefore, American Christians will be...

Did he know that God loved him from the foundations of the earth? With a power far exceeding the immensity of the cosmos, He turned all His attention to creating that man and declared, “You...

There is something gratuitous about creation, an unnecessary abundance of beauty, and through its blossoms and pleasures we can revel in the sheer largesse of the Father.

Christianity’s goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.

big story” that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable...

Father, I do acknowledge and confessThat I this honor, I this pomp have broughtTo Dagon, and advanc’d his praises highamong the Heathen round; to God have broughtDishonor, obloquy, and op’d the mouthsOf Idolists, and Atheists[…]The...

Cosmopolitan discourse emphasizes the _cosmic belonging_ of all individual human beings as the ground of our hospitality, solidarity, justice and neighbor-love. Cosmopolitan discourse is about turning a _compassionate gaze_ onto others regardless of one’s nationality...

In these remote corners, I have discovered a center point, where East met West, and although there has been a collision of cultures, there is now a new Christian identity that is distinctly Chinese. The...

Jesus has shown Himself faithful too many times for me not to believe, and by that I mean believe all the time.

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God’s grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

But the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon all; it is our cheek we are to turn,...

Someone heroic and valiant, not merely skilled in speech; someone who is kind and pure in heart. Someone who does not play with white roses that belong to others.

He (Peter) doesn’t know if he’s looking into the eyes of a madman, or the eyes of a King.

The Lord does not require us to wear a [cassock] — He wants us to be good and kind.

People’s love for us may change, depending on what we do or don’t do to please them. But God’s does not—it’s everlasting.

Personally, I think the ‘Christian family’ should be called a Christian fantasy.

This philosophy of spiritual formation through the consumption of external experiences creates worship junkies — Christians who leap from one mountaintop to another, one spiritual high to another, in search of a glory that does...

The truth is, the Devil’s job is easy.

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

God can have our money and not have our hearts, but He cannot have our hearts without having our money.

But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the...

In that day every trial borne in patience will be pleasing and the voice of iniquity will be stilled; the devout will be glad; the irreligious will mourn; and the mortified body will rejoice far...

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to...

The world is not composed of religious and non-religious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have differing ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the Living God in different ways.

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of...

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids...

The peculiarity of the Christian faith is not to teach this doctrine but to render it, in various ways, more tolerable. Christianity teaches us that the terrible task has already in some sense been accomplished...

One way to handle the discrepancy between our beliefs and our sinful inclinations is to repent, pray for grace and forgiveness, and struggle on in the belief that God will forge a greater harmony for...

The strange thing about adulthood, when you’re single, is that it’s possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent...

Moreover, the fact that the Son of God became man through being conceived by the Holy Spirit and being born of the Virgin Mary, that is, not of the will of the flesh nor of...

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

We’ll see Heaven together. I promise with all my heart I’ll never leave you alone.