All tagged darkness
Congregations need ministers who humbly consider themselves as they present the good news. They need ministers who recognize that they are sinners saved by the grace of God, empowered by God to speak a message of hope and reconciliation to a hurting and distressed world.
Because Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), we become a beacon when we live according to his statutes and commands and act as his hands and feet.
Only God can bring light out of darkness, and the church cannot limit God’s work to its own projects and priorities.
Paul is encouraging his hearers to enter into the realm of God even while they remain in this life.
Paul offers a binary view of life: light and darkness, day and night. But the young Christians must live as befits the light.
To take the language of light and darkness, we should remember that it is biblical. In the hands of the prophets and apostles, it is full of rich significance.
But into the darkness, God sends his light. It’s what he has been doing since the beginning. “Let there be light” were the first words spoken.
We’re in over our heads; light spreads at too slow a pace for one step, it seems. We’re waiting; are you here?
What will follow this season remains to be seen, but it will certainly alter what church looks like and how we practice the way of Jesus. What should leaders do as we enter into this uncertain and challenging time?
Fear is not the most reliable of counselors. Yet in the face of darkness we all have to come to the terrible truth that monsters are real.
All of them need a little light in the midst of the darkness. I want nothing more than to bring a little light into the darkness.
With so much craziness in the air, what are leaders to do? Hand-wringing or trying to retreat to some happier time will not serve the people of God or God’s mission in the world.
For me, these rules have been helpful daily reminders for how to process and do life with God in a more effective manner, and I hope they have been the same for you.
I will cling to the cross because it is the only place to find reconciliation between this world’s suffering and shame and a God who claims to be good.
Ministry, whether it be as a profession or as the call that comes to each follower of Jesus, can be a lonely business. We don’t like being alone—or more specifically, we don’t like being singled out.
In my fear and despair, my anger and bitterness, I cry out at the top of my lungs and from the depths of my heart—begging, pleading for God to wake up and hear me.
He was left all alone. For centuries these haunting words have filled the space between human extremity and divine encounters.
I'm still a work in progress and have come to believe that I will always be changing as a minister. I thought it might be helpful to someone to consider my path as a preacher.
The questions that we’re afraid to even have because they cause us to doubt our own faithfulness to God There has to be a place for these questions, and thus a place for the people who carry them around.
I have a very simple proposition: rejoicing and weeping, great joy and great sorrow, leave us in places of great temptation to idolatry.
