Jim Wallis recently offered the opening salvo of an invitation to discuss exactly how “Christian” the Tea Party movement is. I would like to briefly engage with his five points here, but not in the hope that we will wind up with an actual discussion. He, after all, is an advisor to the president, while …
Righteousness, Peace and Joy
INTRODUCTION:The apostle spends quite a bit of time and energy on this question, and this is why we are doing the same thing. What will distract us from those things on which God places great value? It will be those things on which we try to place high value, and all on our own authority …
The Problem Character in the Sketch
You have been exhorted as a people numerous times to remember who you are in the story you are in. You have been asked to think about what kind of character you are. If the day you are having were a movie, what character would you be? And would it be a sympathetic character or …
Nothing But Gift
One of the hardest lessons for us to learn is that our salvation is all of grace. We know that it is by grace; we struggle with the idea that it is all of grace. We want to shoehorn something in there that distinguishes one from another. But, though there are distinctions, and sharp ones, …
Teetering on the Brink
Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all. Father, we confess now that our nation teetering on the brink …
Where There Are No Sidelines
God has fashioned the world in such a way that we always have to come down to the point. However much we might want to obscure the issues, however much we might build great universities with trained brains to cover everything in a dark mist, however much we reward those pundits who make ample room …
A Dead Mackerel by Moonlight
“The religiously self-righteous are, to use the great words of John Randolph, like a dead mackerel on the beach in the moonlight. They simultaneously ‘shine and stink.’ What religious men esteem is not what God esteems. Our prayers need to be prayed for. Our tears need washing. Our repentance needs to be repented of” (Joy …
In Such a Way as to Catch Fire Itself
“‘Preaching,’ exclaimed Lloyd-Jones, ‘is theology coming through a man who is on fire'” (Sargent, The Sacred Anointing, p. 62).
As In, Knock It Off
In his next chapter, Hunter wraps up his round up of the three major groups he has been discussing — the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the neo-Anabaptists. As before, he considers them all to have been tragically politicized, but he clumps the Right and Left together, and sets the Anabaptists off to the …
Free Fall
[Discussing Eccl. 7:26 & Prov. 22:14] “Foolish men believe they have found sexual liberty at just the moment when God has seized them by their yearning little idol in order to dash them against the rocks. Their exhilarating sensation of liberty is only temporary — a free fall with death at the end of it” …