Shepherd the flock! Remember that these difficulties are not interruptions in your pastoral work but are the pastoral work itself. One final concern: Be sure to keep what you hear to yourself alone and any notes or files secure. Do not use the stories you hear as illustrations in your messages or as gossip.  ... Continue Reading

The gospel shouldn’t be a rarity; it should be a normality, and when shared frequently with and to others, good news can become normal—in the best sense. While Christ alone does the work in human hearts, he wants them to hear the message from our mouths.   Bravery began for me in the depths of... Continue Reading

Like many young people I did not make the most of what was offered, but that was my fault. At that that time, nobody told me I should be ashamed of my whiteness or if I wanted to become a girl I could. We believed good and evil were objective categories. No one suggested that... Continue Reading

Marriage is good and good for us, the design of a Creator who actually has our best interests at heart. The decline of marriage in modern America is a tragedy because we weren’t made to live in a marriage-arid society, and that means improving what Wilcox calls “the state of our unions.” Thankfully, if these... Continue Reading

Out of all the innumerable sounds in heaven and earth, God pays special attention to the voice of his people. Psalm 34 is not simply a theological statement of this fact—it is the personal testimony of David, when he was a fugitive running for his life. He celebrates his own experience of God hearing his... Continue Reading

God promises: “Even a woman may forget her nursing child, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49: 15,16) Among those who first heard these words, who could have anticipated the Greatest Cost, Christ’s engraved/cross-scarred hands, seven hundred years later?   Friends, pastor/poet Holy... Continue Reading

The church must bear witness to a grown-up faith. That means that we need a renewed sense of the holy, the sacred, and the transcendent. And that must start at the top, where it is too often most absent. The X feeds of many of the loudest Christian pastors today indicate little difference from the... Continue Reading

We should pray for the quick coming of things agreeable to God’s will because we strongly desire them. At the same time, we should patiently submit to the wisdom of God’s timing in answering our prayers. We should sincerely pray for the Lord Jesus to come quickly even if we have reason to believe that... Continue Reading

I hope God’s Crime Scene can help you answer this question by employing a number of very simple investigative tools detectives use every day. Criminal investigators recognize one important evidential truth: the identity of a suspect must account for all the evidence “in the room”. Whatever caused the origin of our universe must also account for all the other evidence we... Continue Reading

Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks. He said this a week ago at an... Continue Reading