Roofcrashers
“Some men came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on.” (Mark 2:3–4) I love this story. This […]
The Threefold Cord
“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts… A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9, 12) A few years ago, I was challenged to “sum up” New Life Church. Like most organizations, we have a vision statement, a mission statement, and a purpose statement. But […]
The Company We Keep
“And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple…” (1 Peter 2:5, NLT). For the last two weeks, we’ve been discussing the church. I’ve locked onto Peter’s description of the church: God is in the process of building this spiritual temple, and we are the building blocks. The church isn’t just […]
Better Together
“And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24–25) William Blake famously said, “A bird, a nest; the spider, a web; […]
The People You Meet
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I […]
People: Good, Bad, Ugly
36 After he said this, he knelt down and prayed with all of them.37 There was a great deal of weeping by everyone. And embracing Paul, they kissed him,38 grieving most of all over his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they escorted him to the ship.1 After we tore ourselves […]
Hamburgers and Friends
I want to take a short break from our weekly look at the book of Acts and talk about the sermon topic from Sunday: heritage. I think the idea of passing on a godly heritage has been on my mind more lately because my wife and I have a son who is a senior in […]