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Christmas SHINY!
I love shiny. I love sparkly, glittery, light-filled, dazzling anything. My motto is, “If it don’t shine, it ain’t mine.” And I’m not alone. When women visit Dallas, one of the most popular places for friends to take them is to a huge store that sells thousands of pieces of costume jewelry with more bling than you can imagine. Why do so many of us like shiny? I think it’s because we are hard-wired for worship and we long for heaven where even the streets gleam with gold, and beautiful jewels and pearls abound. Heaven is a shiny, glorious place that radiates the beauty of a shiny, glorious Savior. But…
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Moses, used by God to intervene on behalf of His apostate people
Title: Moses, used by God to intervene on behalf of His apostate people Aim: To assess how to respond to the temptations we face each day. Scripture: Exodus 32:1–14 Apostasy conceived and enacted, Exodus 32:1-6 Exodus has two principal sections. The first (chaps. 1–18) portrays God as the Savior and Provider of His people. The second (chaps. 19–40) depicts the Lord as being holy and righteous. Through God’s revelation of Himself, He instructed the Israelites in His sovereignty and majesty, goodness and holiness, grace and mercy. They discovered that the Creator is the one and only Lord of heaven and earth. Crucial to the narrative is…
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A Christian Response to Those Who Question God’s Judgment and Heart
Another week, another new big-budget Hollywood movie that condemns God as unjust and uncaring. And it’s not just Hollywood. We hear it more and more in schools. In the marketplace. From unbelieving friends and family. How do you respond? It hurts my heart. God is such a Treasure. I wonder how people can miss it. But clearly they increasingly see themselves as more moral and compassionate than the God of the Bible. How might we respond? First, we can gently ask about the hypocrisy of condemning God. It’s stunning that you can walk into American theaters this week and see a movie, Selma, that shows the pain…
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Watching Transformation Happen
Last week I was privileged to attend the annual Exodus Conference along with a thousand people coming out of homosexuality, as well as some family members and people like myself who minister to them. Nothing has built my faith in the power and the loving heart of our life-changing God like my decade-long involvement in this kind of ministry. I got to experience the power of answered prayer as I stood in worship with a divorced couple whom I have known online for several years but met at the conference. The husband had gone AWOL for the past year, choosing to pursue his feelings instead of his identity as a…
