In this series, we’ve been saying beliefs don’t automatically change your life. They have to be instilled into your heart through spiritual disciplines, through Christian practices. I’d like to talk now about a Christian practice you probably don’t t...
Many people believe God is real and God loves them. That belief ought to make you more secure, happier, and more humble. But beliefs don’t automatically turn into changed thoughts and feelings and behavior. Beliefs have to be turned into changed char...
We’re in a series on Christian practices. We’ve said beliefs have to be turned into changed character through Christian practices, through spiritual disciplines. We come now to forgiveness and reconciliation of relationships. In our culture, we tend...
We’re in a series on Christian practices. Beliefs don’t automatically produce a changed life. Beliefs have to be turned into changed character through Christian practices, through spiritual disciplines. We’re going to look now at a Christian practic...
The belief that God loves you ought to make an enormous difference. But in so many cases, it does not. Beliefs don’t automatically produce changed character. Beliefs must be turned into changed character through Christian practices, through spiritual...
We’re in a series on what we’re calling Christian practices or spiritual disciplines. You may have beliefs, but those beliefs don’t automatically produce a different character unless your beliefs are turned into actual changed character through spiri...
Christians have all of these great beliefs, yet the beliefs we have don’t automatically produce changed character. That’s the reason there are so many people who profess Christianity who are just as selfish as everybody else. Beliefs don’t just produ...
An awful lot of people who believe in God are as messed up and as selfish as everybody else. Why? Because beliefs don’t automatically create changed character. You have to turn beliefs into character with something in the middle. Between beliefs and...
We’re starting a new series on spiritual disciplines, or Christian practices, like gathering for corporate worship, private meditation and prayer, the disciplines of simplicity and generosity, reading the Bible in community, and spiritual friendship....
As we come to the end of the book of Jonah, we can ask ourselves the question, “What’s this story about?” Who is the protagonist? Who is the antagonist? It’s not Jonah who is the protagonist. It’s not the fish who is the protagonist. It all comes do...
The book of Jonah is awfully relevant to our situation, especially today. Jonah has been asked to go to the capital of Assyria, the great rising, emerging imperial world power. It was a violent place. It slaughtered helpless people. Jonah’s response...
We continue to see the relevance of Jonah’s situation and the story of Jonah to our own. Jonah was a prophet and he had a relationship with God. He was a preacher. He had faith. He had an understanding of who God was and who he was. He was moving alo...
Jonah is a prophet. God has come to him and told him to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the implacable foe, the implacable enemy of his country. “Go to that city and preach against it. Warn them about God’s anger.” What Jonah does, of course,...
The book of Jonah is really one of the best possible places to get an overview of what the Christian message is about. This passage is about sin. But it doesn’t actually ever use the word sin. And yet, not only does it profoundly map out the real nat...
Jonah was called to go to Nineveh to preach, and after a lot of detours, he did. When he got there and began to preach, we’re told that Nineveh, by and large, turned from its violence and its evil ways. Now this is a marvelous thing and we would expe...
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