The disciples of Jesus came to him one day with a request: Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus replied with a remarkably concise, model prayer. We call it the Lord’s Prayer and everyone knows it …
The Gospel of John #4
Of the four gospel writers, it is John who is the theologian. More than the others, he captures and reports for us those words and deeds of Jesus that tell us who he is and …
The Gospel of John #3
Jesus of Nazareth was full of surprises. His disciples often had trouble figuring him out, but Jesus had an agenda. Everything he did was for a reason. Take an incident early on in Samaria. Jesus …
The Gospel of John #2
From here, it’s hard to imagine what those first encounters with the mature Jesus were like—for those who saw him for the first time. I have no reason to imagine that Jesus was in any …
The Gospel of John #1
The apostle John presents us with the most astonishing theology. And he does it right off the bat, without preamble. To the early theologians of the Christian church, he also posed a dilemma. The church …
The Gospel of Mark #7
And he came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; …
American Prophets
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate …
Life and Light
There was a time when I thought the anti-abortion people were just a little too cute in calling themselves “pro-life”. I don’t think that any longer. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was precisely …
Everything Is Beautiful
I used to wonder at the decay of popular music in all of its forms. Why wasn’t anyone writing beautiful music? It seemed almost as though they had lost the ability. And then I read …
Expectations of Marriage
When on vacation, celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary, my wife and I happened to notice a magazine article entitled, Marriages that Last (Is Yours One?). That was irresistible under the circumstances. Our marriage seemed to …
Covenant Marriage
For the first time in our history, married couples are in a minority. Married couples now only comprise 48% of the households of this country. Back when I was a junior in high school, going …
Music from the Heart
View PostChurch Music: Blessing or Burden?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of contemporary church music. After all, even Johann Sebastian Bach was reprimanded by his pastor for his “modern music”. Bach was criticized, not because his music was bad, but …
The Gospel of Mark #6
He said unto them, How many loaves have you? go and see. And when they knew, they said, Five, and two fishes. And he commanded them to make all sit down by groups upon the …
The Starting Point
Nancy Pearcey in her book, Total Truth, brought something into focus that I had thought about but hadn’t quite got together. She observed that a common weakness of evangelism is that we start with redemption. …
The Power to Love
A man can live without food…for a while. He can live on short rations for quite a while. But sooner or later the body withers and dies. We know what it looks like, because we …
Lost Children
I really hate to tell you this, but I think we did a better job of sex education back in the 1940s than you folks are doing today. Now, in case you are scratching your …
Love and Sex
Now, I have the greatest admiration for the teaching profession. It’s an honorable one. But there’s a lot of experimentation going on in schools led by educators who are long on idealism and short on …
The Gospel of Mark #5
And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, …