As many of you know, most of the readers of this blog have had a pretty rough couple of days with recent events. I thought I would use my post today to lighten the air a little bit by posting a humorous poem I wrote about 6 months ago. I will return to my normal content tomorrow. All of the events in the poem actually happened… except the falling in love part. I was in the car with some friends on a trip to Chicago over Christmas break. We got stuck in traffic and kept passing this car full of girls, who were presumably sisters. I was bored and this poem is the result of my antics. (more…)

All too often I see Christians hopping around from church to church. Most of the time, they give the usual reason of “God called me…” Who can argue with that? However, this muddled confusion of wandering sheep couldn’t be further from the heart of God. Instead, the underlying reason for most of this church shopping is that people were challenged with something they didn’t want to own up to at their old church, or they got in a fight with someone that they didn’t want to resolve. Because churches rely on your attendance for their dollars, they do everything they can to seduce individuals who are looking around for a new body. The effect on the way we do church is devastating. I would like to see Christians called back to committed relationships where life is given to the church rather than ‘me’ centered relationships where people suck life from the church. (more…)

If you consider the madness of the Corinthian church, Paul’s priority in addressing her problems is really quite surprising. Most of us would have busted out of the Greeting with all guns blazing at incest and ecclesiastic intoxication (1 Cor. 5 and 11), but Paul recognized a more central, more dangerous problem.

Much like today, believers in Corinth were mixing their faith in Christ with faith in the personality of a ministry. This wasn’t a different religion or a cultish spin-off that Paul was addressing, but men who considered it worth the cost of division to identify with a non-Jesus characteristic.

Does this not happen today? In Corinth it was “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos”; in Contemporary Christian America it’s “I follow R.C. Sproul” or “I follow Rick Warren”. Believers inundate themselves with ministry “materials” and migrate from one conference to the next, never actually drinking divine motivation from the secret place with Christ. (more…)

I have decided to return in my Bible reading for a little while to the minor prophets. Yesterday I read Hosea and it struck me powerfully. This section of the Bible is often overlooked. Hosea is a small book tucked away in the part of the Bible that isn’t read in Sunday School. However, Hosea has one of the most powerful testimonies of any biblical character. Here we have a man who was told by God to go out and marry a prostitute, because Israel had committed prostitution against God. That’s pretty rough. It doesn’t end there; even after Hosea’s wife leaves him to go pursue other lovers, God calls him to go and buy her back; sound familiar? The prostitution that Israel was guilty of committing against God was idolatry. I refer you back to another post, Idols Named Jesus, to figure out what this means today. I would like to take a look at two powerful passages from Hosea, keeping in mind the context of what God has commanded Hosea to do. (more…)

I have a confession to make. God has recently revealed to me me an area in which I need to become more broken. God wants all of me and this includes my mind. He has shown me that the God I talk about in class and the God I talk to are not quite the same. I have tried to fit him into my systematic ideas about him. Worst of all, I have talked to people as if I know something. I care more about being right than helping others see God. I pray that God would truly break me in each of these areas. I want to be able to search out the deeper things of his character that he wishes to show me instead of creating my own philosophical God that fits with my system. It is time to hand my philosophy of God over to God himself. (more…)