Category: Kingdom Perspectives
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Building on Rock: The Law of Christ and the Role of Works in the Christian Life (Part 2)
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these…
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Building on Rock: The Law of Christ and the Role of Works in the Christian Life (Part 1)
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these…
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Beyond “Lord, Lord”: Where Reformations Go Wrong and How We Can Enter the Kingdom
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord!” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, drive out demons in Your name, and do many miracles in Your…
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Enter Through the Narrow Gate: The Hidden Way into the Kingdom
Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14) In 1678, an English Puritan named John Bunyan wrote…
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“Hope Is What Allows Me to Be Here”: Suffering with Christ in Mosul, Iraq
We live in an era when many are suffering. Suffering raises questions, demands interpretation, whether it’s the suffering of war, of natural disaster, of hatred, of personal tragedy. Of every possible interpretation of human suffering, I cling to this truth: that Christ promises to share in it, to be with us in it. This is…
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[Still] Weeping with Those Who Weep: A Response to Charlottesville
I know, I know. Charlottesville isn’t the headline anymore. There’s been a hurricane. There have been more reasons to weep. More things to heal from. But open displays of hate mean something different from what hurricanes mean. I worry that we will try to sweep it all under the carpet (again) too quickly. Charlottesville happened…
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Pearls Before Swine: Jesus the Riddler and What He Might Have Meant
The Greeks and Romans didn’t use paragraphs. So when my Bible lumps Matthew 7:6 in with the discussion on judgment right before it, I take it on faith that they’ve got the flow right. In this case, though, I’m not sure they do. It’s curious either way that Jesus would follow up a long teaching…
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How to Be a Judgment-Free Zone: Jesus on Judgment, Part 4
In an earlier post I wrote that seeing, understanding, and discerning are intuitive, things we do automatically and instinctively, but judgment is a choice. I believe that to be true, but it isn’t obvious. For most of us, judging itself FEELS instinctive. We do it so fast we aren’t aware we’re doing it. So Jesus’s…
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The Comparison Trap: Jesus on Judgment, Part 3
Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and…
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It’s a World Full of Real Danger. Here’s Why That’s Irrelevant.
Excerpt from Fearless: Free in Christ in an Age of Anxiety by Rachel Starr Thomson, Carolyn Currey, and Mercy Hope. Read another excerpt here. When Moses chose twelve spies to go and scout out the land, they came back with an “evil report”: There were giants in the land. Evil is an appropriate word. In English, the…