Should You Personalize Bible Verses That Aren’t Personal?

My wife is mad at me because I took away one of her favorite verses. Well, not me, actually, but Shannon McWilliams. Shannon’s teaching is usually derivative of my own, which is good because it keeps him from error. When he goes off on his own he tends toward heresy. On this one occasion, however, he went...

Redwood Time and the Kingdom of God

The Coast Redwood is the world’s tallest living organism, with the tallest towering 35 to 38 stories high. From a distance a tree that tall looks long and slender like a basketball player, but in fact the Coast Redwood is massive. At eye-level the trunk can be 27 feet in diameter, the length of two VW...

A Relationship With God is Not Enough

When we think and talk about God, we do so in human terms. We envision God as human-like. We really have no other categories in which to talk about God or gods. Even the ancient religions who envisioned their gods as animals saw them as human-like animals. It’s called anthropomorphism, which is one of those...

There’s No “ME” in “Scripture”

Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the...

Is Prayer Effective When Our Situation Doesn’t Change?

In my last post I wrote how prayer is primarily designed not to move God to action, but to move us. That is not to assert that God does not listen to our prayers, or isn’t active in our world. He does, and is. It is, however, an acknowledgement that a God who is good and who is characterized by...

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