The Wake-Up Call

In the Old Testament, God is with us. In the post-Pentecost New Testament, God is within us.

The question is not whether we worship; it’s who or what we worship. Whatever or whoever it is that we order our lives around in order to make them work—that is our God.

God is as real to you as your worship is real to him.

This is not a God to hide from but to be hidden in. His presence is healing because his nature is love.

One of the defining identity markers for Christians is that we are resurrection people. This means that we understand that God always has the last word.

Hiddenness is the gift of God to the humble ones, who have traded in their own quest for glory for the pursuit of beholding the glory of Another.

We are conditioned to disbelieve anything that seems too good to be true. And the truth is, there is only one thing in life too good to be true that is actually true: the Word of God.

Our prayers tend toward asking God for many things, but how often are we specifically “inquiring of the Lord” about the matters of our times, the curiosities of our circumstances, and the puzzling dilemmas of our days?

The grace of God is not that he pardons our sin and keeps us out of hell-jail. The grace of God is that he loves us so much he desires us in his presence all the time, constantly, now and forever, world without end, amen.

Becoming Other-centered is the secret to becoming others-centered, which is the outcome of being delivered from self-centeredness.

Here's the most amazing thing about God in the face of controlling idolaters and stiff-necked people. He loves us anyway.

This psalm celebrates the power and grandeur of the voice of the Lord.

True worship leads to self-sacrificial living. Idolatry (or false worship) leads to self-indulgence. True worship leads to heartfelt repentance. Idolatry (or false worship) leads to sinful revelry.

God creates, and God beholds. As divine image-bearers, we do the same. It's what we were made for.

God is so completely other than us that there is nothing we can do to prepare to be in his presence. He has to make a way.

This God is not common, not casual, and not contaminated by sin.

Where God is concerned, the way something is built is as important as the thing being built for God.

Sin is death. Blood is life. Atonement (at-one-ment) is reconciliation with God.

The cross becomes the place where God’s perfect justice meets God’s perfect mercy.

Though salvation happens in an instant, deliverance takes time. Salvation is by grace through faith and requires only our receiving it. Deliverance is by grace through faith and requires our involved participation to see it through.

The Word of God always reveals the wisdom of God and the wisdom of God always points us toward the will of God.

I wonder how our faith has become adorned with all manner of decoration, attire, and accoutrements. I wonder what it would mean to get back to primitive faith, to plain scriptural Christianity.

Being afraid of God describes the reaction of persons who come into God’s unmitigated presence and do not know God’s nature. The fear of God describes the posture of persons who know the enormity of God’s holiness yet trust in the extravagance of God’s goodness.

The law is not about behavior, but about the heart. Far before the law is broken, the heart is broken.

If our relationship with God doesn’t directly show up in our relationships with each other, our relationship with God is broken.

As David longed for the day when a temple would stand in Jerusalem and God’s presence would fill the holy of holies, so we long for the day when we will be in the full presence of God.

Sabbath rest is not functional or utilitarian rest. It is not resting from work, nor is it resting up for work. It is resting into relationship with God and others.

The commandments are not about becoming a law-abiding citizen, as is commonly thought. They are about becoming a covenant-keeping worshiper.

I wonder if some dimension of repentance might include waking up from our predictable devotional patterns and getting back to the core essence of what they are really all about: meeting with God.

Far from a ramped-up religion of striving, which is so often signified by earnestness and zeal, consecration is the pathway of humility and surrender.

In order for us to become the fullness of his presence in the world, he will transform our sin-sick broken nature to become like his love-filled holy nature.

We don't limit God. We just handicap our ability to be effective agents of God's capacities in our lives.

As Christians, we cannot, or should not, claim to be without sin. However, our life can and should be oriented toward God and around the great, unfolding plan of God.

Friends, we, the followers of Jesus Messiah, are monotheists (people of one God). All of life is received from, mediated by, and lived through the one true and living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one God in three persons—Blessed Trinity.

To make an offering of ourselves to God is what it means to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength—to offer our bodies to him without reserve. There is only one reason we would not do this: We do not trust God.

The church doesn’t have laypeople. The church is laypeople.

Hardship in the wilderness will do one of two things in our lives. It will infuse character into our souls or wear callouses onto our hearts—holiness or hardness.

Something about desperation focuses prayer. Something about prayers of desperation creates a context for divine breakthroughs.

We must be delivered from our faith in God as religion and into our faith in God as everyday life.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

In the midst of what could otherwise be a chaotic experience in the wilderness, God establishes structure, rhythm, and direction.

The kingdom of God is a very different place than the kingdom of the world, and the wilderness is the place where it all gets sorted out—the wheat from the chaff.

The pathway toward enough is found through obedience to God alone.

When we live in direct, right relationship with God, the way is made to live in direct, right relationship with ourselves and in direct, right relationship with one another.

Worship is the everyday reality and relationship with the provider to whom we attribute value and worth and the reception of provision, protection, and peace from this provider.

We must learn to make the wilderness pivot, which is the shift from wants-and-needs-driven expectations to core God-given longings.

Because of Christ’s work on the cross, we have been declared not guilty before the great tribunal of God’s judgment throne.

God knows what we need, and he knows we regularly need retreat and refreshment.

God cares about our bodies and our health.

While it’s always easier to grumble at our leaders in the wilderness, the secret to success is crying out to God.