In a relational crisis, determining realistic expectations and identifying wise nonnegotiables is difficult. It can feel like trying to corral a bag of spilled marbles on a ship during a tropical storm. With every new piece of information, with every conversation that goes poorly or well, with each memory you’re trying to recontextualize, it feels like the marbles (i.e., expectations) move all...
On a Sunday afternoon in January 1851, sixteen-year-old Charles Spurgeon was given an opportunity to preach his very first sermon. The only problem was that the service was going to be in less than an hour. If you were in that situation, what would motivate you to take that opportunity? And if you did take it, what would you preach about? The Motivation for Preaching The previous day, Spurgeon...
King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful king in all of Babylon, has a dream that troubles him deeply. Some commentaries suggest that he doesn’t even remember the contents of the dream because it was so intense and troubling. Distressed by this great mystery, the king turns to the smartest people he knows to interpret his dream, but they are unable to help. In fact, the wisest people in all of...
This era in history is not friendly toward humility. Humility, many think, is weak, small, ineffective, cowardice-in-disguise, part of the feminization of culture. Of course, we could say this about any era in history. Power and strength have always been the real human ethic, with personal boasting considered a sign of healthy confidence. But our disregard of humility today seems even more...
I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that as a church living in the modern world, we don’t really know what to do with a book like Lamentations. Traditionally, the book has been read in the Christian church during Holy Week. But unless you keep the church calendar, I doubt you have read the book of Lamentations on an annual basis every Easter season. If you read through the Bible each...
