Tag: Digging in Deeper

Mural showing a contrast between justice with a masked figure and scales, and forgiveness with two hands clasped

The Hard Way of the Gospel

Leave a comment

“Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God’s wrath, because it is written, ‘Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay,’ says the Lord. But ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.'” (Romans 12:19-20 CSB – Read the chapter)

Everybody loves the idea of love. We love the good feelings we associate with it. We love the idea of doing good things for someone we really care about. We love having someone support us and express their concern for us. And that’s a good thing because those are good things. But real love, the love of Christ, is bigger than that. It is harder than that. Being committed to someone else’s good sometimes means doing the hard thing to help them get back on the track of that good even when they have drifted from that path. Sometimes it even means actively taking steps to stop them from doing evil. This requires commitment on the part of the one who is doing the loving; commitment to the point of sacrifice. After all, to express the ultimate love for us, Jesus sacrificed His own life on the cross so that we might live. Marvel’s most recent small screen offering, the second season of Daredevil: Born Again, puts all of this on display in a really powerful way. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…
Woman reading from a scroll to a crowd in a historic market street

Seeking Wisdom: A Call to Action

Leave a comment

“Wisdom calls out in the street; she makes her voice heard in the public squares. She cries out above the commotion; she speaks at the entrance of the city gates: “How long, inexperienced ones, will you love ignorance? How long will you mockers enjoy mocking and you fools hate knowledge? If you respond to my warning, then I will pour out my spirit on you and teach you my words.” (Proverbs 1:20-23 CSB – Read the chapter)

How does one find wisdom? Many people might answer that question by pointing to experience. If we just live long enough, eventually we’ll accumulate some wisdom as we go. If we encounter enough different situations, wisdom will be the natural result. And that sounds like it could be true except that there are old people who are still fools, and busy people who don’t seem to have learned a thing from all they’ve done. No, the truth is that wisdom doesn’t come naturally. It must be sought on purpose. Thankfully, as much as we might be seeking it – seeking her to use the personification wisdom receives in Proverbs – she is seeking us too. We just have to listen. The last big section of Proverbs 1 talks about wisdom’s efforts to call us to her. We’re going to break this down into three parts and take a look at each in turn. Let’s dive in.

Read the rest…
Woman reading a Bible while sitting in a wooden church pew

Do You Want to Be Happy?

Leave a comment

“Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8 CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a culture that obsessively pursues happiness. Whatever it is that makes you happy is what you should do. That’s the message we receive. You shouldn’t have to feel bad feelings. If you do, there’s a way to make them go away. Get rid of that habit. Change your job. Sell your house. Cut off that relationship. Take this pill. Go on that vacation. In fact, not only should you never have to be unhappy, but you shouldn’t even have to be inconvenienced, uncomfortable, or bored. There’s an app for that. As a pastor who can trend a bit in the direction of cynicism, but who has spent a lot of time over a lot of years in the Scriptures, my first reaction is to roll my eyes at all of this and offer up the standard line about happiness being a fleeting emotion while joy is the deeper and richer virtue. Happiness is circumstantial, but joy is a state of being. But for just a minute this morning, let’s assume on the importance of happiness. If happiness is really what you want to experience, let’s take a look at what the data says about how to achieve that.

Read the rest…
Person standing on a rocky mountain looking at the star-filled night sky with the Milky Way visible

Humility and Knowledge: Discovering Real Truth

Leave a comment

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever known something that turned out not to be true? You were as sure as the world that you had your facts straight until you learned beyond any shadow of doubt that you didn’t. Did you really know it at all? Can you know something that isn’t true? That’s a far more difficult philosophical question to answer than it perhaps seems. All true knowledge is rooted in a foundation of truth. If something doesn’t correspond with reality, we can’t really know it. This means that all knowledge starts with knowing the source of reality. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…
Open book on wooden surface with sunrise over river and mountains

Unlocking Wisdom: A Journey Through Proverbs

Leave a comment

“The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning wisdom and discipline; for understanding insightful sayings; for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice, and integrity; for teaching shrewdness to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man—let a wise person listen and increase learning, and let a discerning person obtain guidance—for understanding a proverb or a parable, the words of the wise, and their riddles.” ( Proverbs 1:1-6 CSB – Read the chapter)

Wisdom is not something our culture thinks much about. Knowledge, yes. Experience, perhaps. But wisdom, not so much. That’s too bad because we could use some wisdom nowadays. The choices we face as a people, as a nation, as a world are stark and filled with potential for great good or great harm. The answers to our biggest questions won’t be easy to come by—they rarely are—but the path to the best end will always be one lighted by wisdom. Today we begin a new journey. This is one I have wanted to take for some time, but have always put it off because it has seemed rather daunting. Yet daunting or not, we are going to begin tackling the best source of wisdom we have in the Scriptures. It won’t be a short journey, but, Lord willing, it will be a fruitful one. Let’s begin a trip through the Proverbs.

Let me add one more thing before we dive in. I’m trying something a little different today. You may have noticed this post doesn’t have what has been one of my standard post titles for nine years. Those two titles told you about how long a particular post was going to be, and they told you what Scripture we were going to be exploring together, but they weren’t particularly engaging. While the reach of this blog is global in a way I never could have imagined it would be (it has been viewed in something like 190 countries over its lifetime), it’s also not very big. I would love to see it grow from where it is, and if a search-engine-optimized title will help accomplish that, I guess I can change some. So, titles will look a bit different going forward, but hopefully they’ll be a bit catchier. In any event, on to the focus of the day.

Read the rest…