For the past six weekends we’ve been looking at a few Old Testament Characters.  Their lives revealed God is purposeful even when we cannot see it.  God uses ordinary people to accomplish his extra-ordinary plan in surprising ways. We’ve discovered that everyone of them was challenged and tested.  They learned the nature of temptation and perhaps also their own points of personal weakness; they discovered the faithfulness of God and His ability to keep them in the trial.  Of course they were exposed to this reality: There is no other way to know whether or not God keeps His promises than...

How do you live out the Gospel in life between the world that is and the world that is to come?  How do you live out the Gospel between Sunday morning and the following Saturday night? How do you live out the Gospel in life between cultural engagement and Christian distinction or between community in the market place and Christian community? The central challenge for Christ followers is embodied in Jesus’ commandment from Luke 10:27 (ESV):  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Two...

Several years ago, a good friend of mine was grieving the loss of his father.  It was a sudden death; the kind you don’t anticipate. He wasn’t sick or suffering from any type critical illness. One day, his dad was alive; the next, he was gone. My friend said to me, “I don’t feel I am ready to be the patriarch of the family.  But I am the only one left – so I guess it’s up to me now.” The Bible has a lot to say about fathers.  There is no way in which I want to address all of it. I would like to however focus on three verses:  Proverbs 3:11-13 (NIV) 11 My son, do not despise the...

While I am preparing my message on Samson for this coming Sunday, the significance of grace keeps floating to the surface. The story of Samson’s lapse of judgment is a tragedy of the first order.  From beginning to end there’s not much to applaud. From the beginning God gave Samson everything he needed to succeed in his God given purpose.  He was to lead and deliver Israel from the Philistines.  Though he did not fulfill that purpose God’s grace overruled his lifetime of regret. Most of us will never have the opportunity to perform a heroic act at the end of our life, but all of us will...