On June 9th we celebrated baptism with members of our church family. This afternoon was a beautiful time of sharing stories of the work of God in the lives of his people. We believe that baptism is an outward sign of a Christ-follower’s inward commitment, and a step into a life of commitment to […]
Easter weekend at Living Word was a beautiful celebration of the stronger-than-death love of God. Our six weekend services were a time for us to come together in worship and proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus through song, prayer, and God’s Word. On Good Friday, we reflected on the reality that Jesus laid down his life to defeat sin […]
I was reading some thoughts on the founding of our nation and this thing we call our inalienable rights. These rights include the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, which is a small sample of the things we need and want. And President Jefferson, the deist (one who believes in a distant, watchmaker God who […]
C.S. Lewis is certainly not the final word, nor even always the best word, but he is a very good starting word for important conversations, including conversations on having intimacy with God. Lewis starts this conversation when he says, here is the kind of God most of us would prefer: “An ‘impersonal God’-well and good. […]
The Emotional Life My fourth concern is our struggle with emotions in general. Anger suffers from our more general lack of a way to deal with emotions. Emotions. Can you trust them? Many Christians don’t think you can. This is the result of some unhelpful teaching on emotions that became pretty common in some circles. […]
To get at this concern, let’s have a hypothetical conversation. Scenario One: You say, “I’m angry with God.” I say, “Hmm. What are you doing about your anger with God?” Your answer: Silence. I rest my case. Angry at God and doing nothing about it. That is hazardous to your heart and souring to your […]
Now for my second concern. It’s pretty straight forward. I decided to go back and do a little survey of what the Bible says about anger. Maybe you will be helped by this in the way I was. First, the words anger and angry are not often used in the New Testament. In the Old […]
But Can You Handle It? In my sermon on September 30, I made brief comments on how anger with God doesn’t do you much good when you are going through hard times. This may have been the part of the series What Shall I Do When Life Gets Hard? that generated the most comments from people. […]
We are introducing a new song at Living Word this Sunday called “Reckless Love”. We look forward to singing this together as a church family, considering our own stories and how fiercely the Lord’s love pursues His children. My small son Jude is just learning how to color. He has absolutely no desire to keep […]
The beautiful paragraph below is from Old Testament scholar John Goldingay (Old Testament Theology, vol. 3, p. 706). I hope it speaks to you as it spoke to me. (Note: It was all one paragraph in his book. I broke it up for easier reading.) ******** Parents passionately want their children to grow into people […]