What do you think Christianity is? How do you read the Bible? It is quite easy to think of the Bible as a book of rules — things to DO. Yet, it is far greatest The Story of God, of His coming near to us, and in that way is not primarily about us. The Bible is about GOD. And not just facts, figures and fables — as if God were a science experiment, a idea to be calculated, quantified and categorized. In reality, God has acted in history — in this real world — and as we read Scripture we discover the stories are true, the characters are generally failures, and God is always faithful. That’s...

On the weekend after Christmas I enjoyed the opportunity to preach at our church (previous times here and here). The text was Luke 15, and I called it “The Search.” (Listen here.) Three key themes emerged from Luke 15: A deeper view of our sin // we are lost A higher view of our value // we are treasured A farther view of salvation // Jesus is the Relentless Shepherd The background was key, especially about the Pharisees. Won’t go into it here, but suffice to say they were not villains or extremists. They were the moral middle class, and they are more like us than we even realize....

My good friend Adam Poole (Director of Cornerstone School of Ministry) shared with me a summary of his 15 principles for effective teaching-learning. He is simply a faithful, diligent, godly teacher who authentically loves people. (More than that he is a faithful husband and loving father.) Couple those dynamics with his wealth of Bible knowledge and understanding, and you’ll find a PhD student who gets both learning and teaching. (The best teachers are learners of their students.) I am humbled each time he gives up a day of teaching his students to let me speak to them in his place. That...

Last weekend I preached on David’s pre-king life — before he was famous or had done anything “great” for God. He had started to do “small” things for God, when no one was looking. As a young man he received a promise from God, that he would become King in Israel. Yet, it took more than a decade before he would sit as King over the nation. When we consider the madness, disobedience and bad character of the current king, Saul, we sense David is clearly the better man. Why the delay? God was done with Saul, but didn’t install David for another decade. David not...

(Over the weekend I preached on "The Devoted Church," from the text Acts 2:36-47. A few have asked to hear it, and I’m humbled by the request. Find the audio here .) We are all devoted to something. In fact, we are each devoted to many things. It’s what we talk about, think about, give time and money to. We will sacrifice anything and everything for what we consider most valuable, what we are devoted to. Acts 2:42-47 shows us what the early Christian church was devoted to: 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking...

God loves those others don’t love. He is attracted to the weak because of His gracious nature and He wants the ones no one else wants. Listen to "That Whosoever" SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "God wants the unclean ones", url: "http://www.deTheos.com/2009/05/16/god-wants-the-unclean-ones/" });

For the two of you who read my post on "relevance ," one might think I like to talk over people’s heads and not make the Scriptures relevant to daily life. Then, if you were in the junior high worship this past Sunday (or high school on Weds night), you might think I was dumbing things down too much and not teaching every minutiae of the text. Just the opposite happened, I think. There is a vast difference in attitude between making God relevant, and showing that He already is. The first posture makes the assumption that the Bible cannot be read with clarity by normal people, and...

I’ve been returning to some of my roots, reading the Nicene Creed a lot lately. In preparation to teach on the life of Athanasius — to our high school group, in a series called INSPIRED — I’ve been contemplating the first official church creed (AD 325). Here’s the modern wording of the Nicene Creed (edited again in 381 at Constantinople and of course translated into English, after the Reformation): We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally...

On Sunday I was privileged again to preach in Wilsonville at Canyon Creek Church . This time the text was  Philippians 3:1-11 , and my title: "Worthless Doing and Priceless Knowing ." Asked to give a little synopsis for the church bulletin, this is what I wrote: We have natural bent towards religion. That is, we tend to find our identity by what we do, rather than in Who God is. It is easy to think we have done so much on our own, for our "gains" are clearly seen by looking at our own religious resumes and feeble good works — especially by comparison with others. Yet, in...

This weekend Kari and I are privileged to be able to preach God’s Word. She is heading down south to teach the womens retreat for Calvary Chapel of Corvallis . She has (as usual!) poured over God’s Word and prayed and studied diligently. The four session titles — centered around the theme of "Expectancy without Expectations" came out as: The God of Disappointment, Identifying Expectations (Friday night) Processing Pain, Identifying Fear (Saturday morning) True Hope, Unearthing Expectancy (Saturday mid-day) Enjoying Fulfillment, Worshiping God (Saturday night) Her...