I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”- Isaiah 49:16 “Put everything in God’s hand and eventually you’ll see God’s hand in everything.”- Author unknown After Erling Kjelland returned home to Chicago following his service in the U. S. Navy during World War II, his wife presented him with two blue parakeets. That […]
“Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Potential is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.”- Mark Batterson As […]
“When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume.”- Luke 6:37 In Chapter 7 (“Crash the Party”) of All In, author Mark Batterson quips that, if ever there was an oxymoron, it had to be Pharisee […]
In Chapter 5 of All In, author Mark Batterson states that all of us, like Abraham, have our Isaac- what we find our identity and security based upon. Pastor Batterson stresses that God will test us to make sure that we find our identity and security in the cross of Jesus Christ. If God’s gift […]
“For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.”- Psalm 63:7 “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.”- William Blake During my childhood years in Evergreen Park, IL, our next door neighbors, the Millars, had a large cage in their family room […]
“Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.”- Joshua 3:5 “If you aren’t hungry for God, you are full of yourself.”- Mark Batterson As Mark Batterson concludes Chapter 2 of All In, he states that anytime God is ready to do something amazing in our lives, He calls us to consecrate […]
In Chapter 2 (“The Inverted Gospel”) of All In, author Mark Batterson reminds us that, in the sixteenth century, astronomer Nicholas Copernicus challenged the prevailing belief that the earth was the center of the universe. He turned the scientific world upside down by proclaiming that the earth revolved around the sun. Likewise, Pastor Batterson states, […]
In his Introduction to Part 2 (“Identity: Who We Are”) of Transformed, Caesar Kalinowski asks us to imagine performing as a one-person trapeze act. Obviously, it doesn’t work- we’d need a partner to catch us. Similarly, our new identity in Christ is lived both individually and collectively (as the church). Pastor Kalinowski states that the […]
One Way Love (David C. Cook, 2013) The full title of Tullian Tchividjian’s latest book is One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World. Pastor Tchividjian emphasizes that in our performance-oriented society, the need for God’s inexhaustible grace has never been more urgent. Real life is long on law and short on grace. While […]
“The Gospel is not a command to hang on to Jesus. It’s a promise that no matter how weak your faith and how unsuccessful your efforts may be, God is always holding on to you.”- Tullian Tchividjian In Chapter 10 (“The End of To-Do Lists”) of One Way Love, author Tullian Tchividjian notes the paradoxical […]