What Does It Mean to Wrestle with God?
God does not permit pain in our lives so that we can tap out, but so that we can dig in. The pain is purposeful: It’s a call to engage God, not ignore him. Wrestlers are not meant to hide from pressure; they are meant to squirm under it. If God puts His weight on us, we are meant to press back on Him.
What Is Meditation?
To meditate is like picking up a book about a foreign land and looking intently at the photographs and reading the pages. The photographs and narrative cannot physically change our location so that we can hear the noise of distant streets and taste the foods of unexplored lands. But, the more the book is studied, the more the heart will be thrilled by anticipation. What cannot yet be touched and tasted can indeed be imagined.
Never Further than the Cross
Human beings love to climb ladders. The human ego loves to get as high as it can so that it can turn in contempt and look down on those beneath it. This is the evil of pride. I want to be above you so that I can act as if I am better than you. It’s an ugly truth, but a universal one.
Power + Beauty = Majesty
How do you meditate on majesty? What even is majesty? These are not academic questions of no consequence. To ignore majesty is to ignore God. No one can worship the Almighty who is ignorant and unexperienced in the majestic.
Breathing Freely the Clean Air of Grace
Secular materialism, the great religion of our age, is the second-hand smoke that we breathe daily, lethally, and unwittingly. Although we may not feel in danger, there is cancer in the air. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that modern Christians analyse the way in which a post-Christian culture threatens our vitality.
Will You Follow Christ?
Much of the challenge of the Christian life stems from the difficulty of finding a way to follow Jesus in the midst of all of the distraction and temptation of the modern world. The indispensable guide for staying on track is the teaching of the Bible.
“Greater Works Than These”
It’s an incredible thought that God has projects for each one of us to be involved in. The truth is that the bigness or smallness of these tasks is of little importance. What is amazing is that none of us is overlooked. To be a disciple is to have a role in the mission of God. The implications of this are staggering.
Exploring the Promises of God
Many of us are in hard places right now. Let me encourage us to follow the example of Abram. Don’t live in the suffocating narrowness of the present moment. Instead, lift your eyes to the horizon of promise and take time this week to explore the breadth, length, height and depth of an inheritance that can only be measured by God himself.
Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening
It’s no surprise that I love a good poem. Words have power. We Christians, of all people, should understand this. Strung together, words are not like a pane of glass that simply reveals things as they are in naked fact. A great sentence, or poem, or even novel, is much more like a painting. Words draw out to the surface aspects of reality that demand contemplation and response.