“But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” (James 1:14) Have you ever noticed what we often do to explain sin in our lives? Many of us tend to blame it on someone else. Think about it. From the beginning of time, we have looked for an excuse for our sin. Adam, when he committed his first sin, blamed it on Eve. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” […]

“See my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” (Isaiah 52:13) Michelangelo once turned to a fellow artist and said with frustration in his voice, “Why do you keep filling gallery after gallery with endless pictures on the one theme of Christ in weakness, Christ on the cross, and most of all, Christ hanging dead?” he asked. “Why do you concentrate on the passing episode as if it were the last work, as if the curtain dropped down there on disaster […]

“He is the Head of the body made up of his people – that is, his Church – which he began.” (TLB, Colossians 1:18) A group of pastors from the community in which I live organizes two community-wide prayer services each year. They don’t all come from any one denomination. Ironically, denominations don’t seem to separate them as much as they seem to distance their members from other denominations. These are men of God – Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Charismatics, Pentecostals, all of whom realize that a belief in […]

“When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’ ” (Matthew 27:54) When you stop and think about it, there is a wonderful salvation story here because that Roman Centurion was the first man to believe that Jesus died on the Cross to save him. I am sure he felt the shame that many of us felt when our eyes were first opened to the sin […]