“At the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed.” – Proverbs 5:11 It’s not a coincidence that substance abuse and sexual license like to hang out together. These two vices deceive us in similar ways. There is a promise of escape. There is an...
Resolve to make resolutions
“Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.” – Proverbs 24:27 You can irritate others either by making New Year’s resolutions, or not making them. For the resolution-making snobs, they don’t really...
Your life is like the dawn
“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” - Proverbs 4:18 There’s not many times I can remember waking up to do something outside at dawn. It’s not something you look forward to. And yet…it is. The...
A right and wrong way to Keep Christ in Christmas
Along with the carols, tinsel, gaudy inflatables, red kettle ringers, and frazzled faces of exhausted shoppers which appear around this time of year, another indication of Christmas arrives in the form of signs or bumper stickers reading: "Keep Christ in Christmas". I...
Pain is more than weakness leaving the body
“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” - Proverbs 3:11-12 It doesn’t take Biblical wisdom to see failure as opportunity. That slogan is placarded to...
Wisdom is like a sherpa
“Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul” – Proverbs 2:9-10 If life is a journey, wisdom is your sherpa. We often use navigation terms to describe...
Truth by Consensus
Postmodernism has produced its heir, and its name is Consensus. In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary announced that “post-truth” was its word of the year. The concept post-truth refers to our contemporary sense of justice, in which objective reality and facts bow the knee...
Not all equity is created equal
The battlecry of "equity" serves as a summons to action, or at least outrage, wherever a person feels an injustice, or a passing over. Unfortunately, words like “equity” or “individualism” often become obscured by their usage within political tapestries. Political...
Believe the victim…or not?
David and Goliath. Field of Dreams. Star Wars. Rocky. The Sandlot. The local mom and pop store. Underdog stories never get old. We can't help loving them. They also contain a distinctively American flavor, probably because this country only exists because the underdog...
Consumer Church
We need more people coming to church ready to consume. We need more churches ready to give the people the product they need. That's the trouble with the hating on the consumer mentality-- it's not always wrong. "With joy you will draw water from the wells of...