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Category Archives: Peace with God
Our Faultfinder in Heaven?
I still remember where we were when our oldest son took his first steps. He was a year old, give or take a few days. We were in a cabin in northwestern Ontario. Joel had been pulling himself up and standing for a few weeks, but while we were there, he took his first steps. He got one solid step in, followed by a two-step Lindy Hop, and then crashed to the floor.
We all cheered. You’d have thought he’d won the Nobel Prize. Instead, he took three wobbly steps. Three wobbly steps, but full of promise. We knew this was just the beginning.
One can imagine the same scenario with a different outcome. We’re in the cabin. One-year-old Joel is standing up with his hands on the sofa, and I’m urging him to come to me. I say, “Come on, son. You can do it. Come on.” He turns toward me. He lifts and extends his foot. We all hold our breath. He shifts his weight – he’s taken his first step! He then quickly takes another and another, then goes crashing down in a heap.
And that’s when I say: “That’s all you got? What’s the matter with you? I give you a year, and all you can give me is three lousy steps! You are such a disappointment to me.”
Some people think God is like the critical, impossible-to-please me in the second scenario. Continue reading
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Posted in Peace with God, Spiritual life, Theology
Tagged God the Father, hope, Is God Angry?
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Come Home: Does God Want You Back?
Young marrieds Jim and Jane Flynn were swimming in Lake George in New York state. When Jim got out of the water, he realized his wedding ring had slipped off and was somewhere at the bottom of the lake. Jane continued to wear her ring but Jim’s was lost.
Thirty-nine years later, a woman snorkeling in Lake George spotted something shiny on the bottom. She at first thought it must be a bottle cap, but when she retrieved it, she found it was an engraved wedding ring, with the anniversary date inscribed on the inside. After some research, she found Jim and Jane and returned the ring to them. How surprised and delighted they were to find it again! Jim now sleeps with it under his pillow.
To have the cherished thing returned after a long absence is a cause for celebration. That is just what Jesus says in Luke 15, only there we discover that we are the cherished thing! God cherishes us and wants us to be with him, no matter how long ago we hit bottom. Luke 15 shows us it is never too late to come home.
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The Forgiver
During the closing song at a special service in an Indiana state prison, Chuck Colson noticed one of the inmates, a man named James Brewer, singing out at the top of his lungs. Colson says the man’s face was radiant. James Brewer had come to know Jesus Christ in prison and his life had been transformed.
As soon as the song was over, the Prison Fellowship Team began shaking hands and saying goodbye. Brewer returned to his cell, walking shoulder to shoulder with a Prison Fellowship volunteer. Colson was meeting the governor in Indianapolis in just two hours, so he followed them and urged the volunteer to hurry.
“We’ve got to go!” he called to the volunteer, but the man answered, “Just a minute, please!”
Colson shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the plane is waiting. We have to go right now!”
The volunteer said, “Please, please, this is very important. You see, I am Judge Clement. I sentenced this man to die. But now he is born again. He is my brother and we want a minute to pray together.”
Colson said, “I stood in the entrance to that solitary, dimly lit cell, frozen in place. Here were two men – one black, one white; one powerful, one powerless; one who had sentenced the other to die. Yet there they stood, grasping a Bible together, Brewer smiling so genuinely, the judge so filled with love for the prisoner at his side.”
Forgiveness. God is the Forgiver: he can forgive anyone – even me; even you. And because we are the Forgiven, we are called to forgive, just as God does. “Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). To forgive like God does puts us in a place where remarkable things can happen in our lives. Continue reading
Posted in From the Pulpit, Peace with God, relationships, Sermons
Tagged forgiveness, Is God Angry?
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The God Who Feeds the Ravens
Hypocrisy and greed are responses to a real problem: fear. Hypocrisy is the pathological response of a malfunctioning soul brought on by the fear of what people think of us. Greed is the response of the soul to the fear of not having enough. Hypocrisy and greed are ways of self-medicating. They alleviate the fear problem … for a while.
But hypocrisy and greed are only temporary fixes; they are stop-gap measures. And, unfortunately, the temporary fix makes the long-term solution less likely. Continue reading
Posted in Peace with God, Sermons, Spiritual life
Tagged greed, How to overcome fear, hypocrisy, worry
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Blackmail-proof: A Life Without Secrets
My wife Karen got an email from a scammer this week, blackmailing her and demanding a payment of $1,000 in bitcoin. The scammer claimed to be a hacker who had accessed her email account, embedded a keylogger and had taken … Continue reading
What You Don’t Know Just Might Hurt You
God promises to be found by those who seek him, not by those who don’t care to look. Continue reading
Posted in Peace with God, Spiritual life
Tagged Agnosticism, Knowing God, self-knowledge
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Jesus and the Psychology of Happiness
Popular psychology has been transitioning over the past couple of decades. It’s happier now or, at least, it’s talking about happiness more than it did. For generations, psychology was principally interested in pathology, in aberrant and self-defeating behaviors. Psychiatry has … Continue reading
A Horror Story
But sin not only follows us; it follows us with a hatchet. Sin commits patricide and matricide: it kills the people who brought it into existence. Continue reading
Are You a Person of Peace?
What criteria are used in selecting people for leadership positions in our workplaces, government offices, and churches? Leaders must be smart people who operate from a wide-ranging knowledge base and who reason well. They must also be tough people who … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Faith, Peace with God, Spiritual life
Tagged "one tough nerd", inner peace, mindfulness, pacifism, Peace with God, Supreme Court
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More Than Colored Eggs and Chocolate Bunnies
The Easter circulars came out last week, and they were full of little girls’ dresses and little boys’ suits. Pastel colors were everywhere, dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies ubiquitous. Every kind of ham you can imagine, and some you’ve never … Continue reading
Posted in Faith, Peace with God, Spiritual life, Theology
Tagged C. S. Lewis, easter, kingdom of God, life after death, New Age, post-Christian, resurrection, Sheldon Vanauken
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