“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
If there was ever a case to be made for a particular verse of the Bible being the official verse of sports, I think this one would win the prize. It seems like every professional athlete who is willing to publicly claim the name of Jesus makes sure to put this verse on something he wears to play. And snapped up out of its context, it seems to serve the purpose of sports well. But is there any more to it?
This week we kick off a new teaching series called, The Characters of Christmas, designed to get us ready to experience the incredible Christmas story as fully as we possibly can. The Christmas story is a real story filled with real people. Just like they all had a place in the story, so do we. Let’s look at what place they had to see what our own might be.
A Life of Faith
I wish I could have been there at the birth. It would have been incredible. Now, I’ll tell you straight up that nothing could even come close to comparing with the births of my own sons, but this one would have come pretty far down that road. The couple had been trying to have kids for so long they’d stopped counting. Then, it finally happened. They finally got there. They finally got to experience the joy and wonder of delivering a healthy, precious baby into this world. They were able to hold in their arms this tiny miracle from God. The shouts of joy in the room would have nearly drowned out the healthily screaming baby. The mother was crying with wonder and relief as she looked into the face of her infant son. It had not been an easy journey by any stretch of the imagination, but she had made it. And her husband was standing there with her, silently watching the events unfold just exactly as he had hoped they would.
In this third part of our series, Grace in Hard Times, we finally get a look at what God had to say to Job and his friends after all their questions and assumptions about who He is and how He works. The result feels hard at first until you look a bit closer. What we learn is that God’s job in running the whole universe is a lot bigger than we think and that if we’ll let Him do it, He’ll do it well. Keep reading to see how this unfolds. Up next: A look at how we can keep the rhythm of our lives adjusted to the right beat.
What If God Answered?
Do you remember the worst lecture you ever got from your parents? While I confess that I fall to it way more often than I should with my boys, my folks either weren’t much for lecturing or else I’ve forgotten all of them (which really isn’t very comforting news for all the wisdom parents depart to their children through the vehicle of a lecture…). Still, though, there are times when as parents we need to impart a great deal of important information to our children in a rapid-fire fashion. And, coincidentally or not, these times often happen in conjunction with something they’ve done that wasn’t perhaps totally on the up-and-up and when we are in a state of mild to extreme anger. Now, if that happens to come across as a lecture, is that our fault? Well…probably…but that much is not where I want to go this morning. I’ll come back to this idea in a second. Read the rest…
Evil is present everywhere in our world. We can’t escape it. We can only try and deal with the aftermath. This fact has long seemed deeply at odds with the idea of a good and loving God. The problem of evil is one of the thorniest challenges that has long seemed a roadblock to the Christian faith. In this new series, Grace in Hard Times, with the help of the book of Job, we are going to examine through the context of this epic story one powerful answer to the problem. In this first part of the conversation, we start with a bit of perspective.
What to Do When the Wheels Fall Off
A few years ago the news came out that Elizabeth Elliot had passed away at age 88. Elliot had been serving the Lord in various capacities for nearly her entire life. What she is perhaps best known for, though, is having been married for a short time to Jim Elliot. Jim was every bit as dedicated a servant of the Lord as Elizabeth was, but his story did not end in the same way hers did. In 1955, Jim and four other missionaries, including Nate Saint, were attempting to make contact with the Huaorani tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. After making several initial peace offerings by lowering gifts in a bucket from their plane, the pair finally decided it was time to make personal contact with the tribe. On the morning of January 3, 1956, they landed and met with some of the tribe members for the first time. They were received with excitement and it was looking like things were going to go smoothly. This road for the advance of the Gospel was appearing most promising. But just five days later everything fell apart. When the tribe warriors came out of the woods that morning to the Amazonian beach the missionaries were using as a landing strip and campsite, they did not come for peace. They came to shut down this outsider intrusion into their private lives. Nate, Jim, and the three other men with them were murdered in cold blood, speared to death by the Huaorani warriors. They each left behind a wife and a total of 10 kids among them. These five men had committed their lives to serving Jesus and advancing the Gospel regardless of the costs. They were selflessly committed to this goal and yet this was their end. Read the rest…
“For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Here’s an important principle that radiates from the pages of the New Testament: If we do what Jesus did, we will experience what Jesus did. Put another way: If we walk the path Jesus did, we will receive what Jesus did. This is at one and the same time incredibly challenging and also incredibly encouraging. Read the rest…
The Nexus 