Death may seem like a heavy topic for Lent but it is, after all, what Ash Wednesday is all about. When the worshipers come, they have a little bit of ash (usually taken from the burning of the palm crosses used in the previous year’s Palm Sunday) smudged on their forehead, sometimes in the sign of the cross. More importantly, the pastor then …
Recently I was asked to give a short quote on preaching for publication later this year. As I thought about it, I kept coming back to one thought about how amazing it is that God takes a human event (preaching) and uses it to produce divine results (salvation, conviction, spiritual growth, transformation). Here is the quote I submitted:When we prea…
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). Think of these simple words. Pure.Heart.See.God.We know what those words mean individually, but put them together and we enter a new realm. How do I know if I am “pure in heart”? What does it mean to “see God”? And how should we put these phrases…
This is Day 1 of Lent, the forty days of preparation leading up to Easter, the day of ultimate celebration. A quick check of the Wikipedia entry will give you some helpful background. Note that in the Western tradition, Lent starts today with Ash Wednesday and continues until Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Sundays are not counted as part of …
I’m happy to announce a brand-new section of the KBM website called FAQs, which stands for Frequently Asked Questions. Those who surf the Internet know that most websites have an FAQs section for questions that com up over and over again.For some time we have wanted to devote a major section of the website to answering questions about the Bib…
Two years ago, more or less on the spur of the moment, I wrote a blog entry called How to Spot a Healthy Church–Quickly. That entry turned out to be popular or least noteworthy because it eventually drew 98 comments, which I think is the record so far for any of my blog entries.I hadn’t thought about that entry until Crosswalk decided t…
Herewith a collection of (mostly) unconnected items . . .*This morning I’m going to be on American Family Radio from 11 AM-12 Noon Central Time. To listen live, click on the link and then click on “AFR-Talk.” You can also watch the live video stream.*We have just posted a new sermon called Miracles Come in Many Varieties. We sent …
Over the weekend I received an email from a friend who said:We need your prayers, all hell has broken loose in our lives the devil has attacked me on my job, in our finances and upon my ministry. Please keep us in your prayers we need a breakthrough.It occurred to me that in these uncertain economic times, when so many are losing their jobs and whe…
Tonight Marlene and I watched Taking Chance, a brand-new HBO movie starring Kevin Bacon. Based on real-life events, “Taking Chance” tells how Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Bacon), a volunteer military escort officer, accompanies the body of 19-year-old Marine Chance Phelps back to his hometown of Dubois, Wyoming….
The always provocative Keith Drury has written a new article called How Dare You Have Eight Children! Despite the title, it’s not really about the “octuplet mom” in California. Drury is writing about a larger social trend in which having children is viewed as a purely personal choice and not as the natural outcome of the marriage …