In a few weeks, we will resume our study of Luke’s Gospel, going up the mountain with the disciples to see the transfiguration of Jesus (9:28-36). This short story has been long neglected in the church. In the transfiguration, we find an intertextual tapestry that draws together the doctrines of our trinitarian God, Jesus’ two natures, and the Bible’s storyline (e.g. the exodus, Moses on Mount Sinai, and Elijah’s ministry). Many of us have not seen all the glory there is to see in the transfiguration. And yet the [...]

            One of my seminary professors liked to say, “Persevere brothers, it’s the only good option!” Dr. Morrison would say this when we were overwhelmed with papers and readings and wondering how we would get it all done before the end of the semester. His statement was surprisingly effective for me. When faced with a mountain of work, the options were either to tackle it or give up. We had to pick one. We could choose to persevere or choose to give up. These were the only options, which [...]

The Stream that Leads Us to the Fountain Sometimes during the Christmas season we hear people say, “Happy holidays!” and we really wish they would have said, “Merry Christmas!” We wonder how people could have the audacity to take Christ out of Christmas, so we make sure to (emphatically) say “Merry Christmas” whenever we can. But, of course, there is no Christ in Christmas for many people these days. So we can’t expect people who do not love Jesus to promote his name. As Christians, however, we know that [...]

             “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so; little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.” Maybe your parents sang this little chorus to you when you were little. Maybe you sing it to your little ones now. Did you know that the song has more than one verse? If you want to know what the other verses say, see hymn 344 in our hymnal! Sometimes when I sing this song to our children, I think to myself, “Does the [...]

Recently I was reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (the backstory of Middle Earth) and Andrew Robert’s The Storm of War (a history of World War II). One story is set in the beauty of an exquisite and enchanted world, with glorious beings and tales of mystery and wonder. The other story is set in the industrialized and mechanized and brutal and violent modern world. The contrast between the glory and beauty of the one world and the horrors and devastations of the other could not have been greater, especially because [...]

Hope can be difficult to hang on to sometimes. We want to believe things will get better, but disappointments continue to come. We think we are just in a hard season, but the hard season never seems to end. We know that Christians are supposed to have hope, so we beat ourselves up for feeling despair. We think that feeling hopeless must mean we are not very good Christians. But the people of God have struggled to hang onto hope throughout the ages. Such is life in a broken [...]

Let’s be honest. We all struggle with prayer. Our personal prayer lives are not what we wish they were. We know we should pray more but we are tired and overwhelmed and have so much to do. If your prayer life is anything like mine, it feels like “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” We all struggle with our individual prayer lives. None of us visit our “prayer closets” (Matt. 6:6) as often as we would like. But what if there’s something missing in our lives [...]

Since the Garden of Eden, our sin moves us out of God’s presence. Instead of feeling at home with God, we feel naked and alienated from God and others. Because of our sin, we can’t bear the thought of our lives coming under the holy gaze of God, so we cover ourselves. Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. Like them, we do whatever we can to make ourselves feel safe. There are actually two ways to cover yourself. You can be irreligious and say, “I’m a free [...]

Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with people who do not know him yet. It’s the first part of the Great Commission (Mt. 28:18-20) because the church cannot baptize and disciple people who are not following Jesus. And because it’s part of the Great Commission, it’s something every Christian should be doing. There are lots of approaches and methods and ways to do evangelism. One of the most popular methods during the 1970’s and 1980’s was called Evangelism Explosion (“EE”). It started at Coral Ridge Presbyterian [...]

Meditation on Luke 8:15 “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” Luke 8:15 This verse is part of Jesus’ parable of the sower. In this parable, he says that whenever the seed of the word of God is sown, one of four things happens. Sometimes the word is sown and the devil comes in and takes it away so that a person may not believe (8:12). Sometimes the [...]