More Than Bread

Send me a Text Message! In Christ we are accepted and deeply loved by God.  Think of all the reasons why you have thought you were unacceptable to God. Bring to mind the shame and the worry. Bring to mind the list that Satan the Accuser throws at you. Your prayer life is so dry. Your marriage is on the rocks. Your kids don't like you. You have failed so many times. Your secrets sins scream ou...

Send me a Text Message! One thing I so love about Ephesians is Paul’s gloriously practical vision of the church. I read Ephesians and I think, "This is the dream in the heart of Father God." Ephesians is a practical manual on church but it looks forward also. It looks forward to the whole family gathered together, from every nation. That’s the end game, right? This is why we go through w...

Send me a Text Message! Out of all the amazing parts of God's creation, it's only when he created (creates) people that He says, "That is very good." God's greatest masterpiece is not the amazing way that your body works together. It's not the color of your hair or the shape of your hips, it isn't even your tan-toned abs.  God's greatest masterpiece is your...

Send me a Text Message! "But God..." There are a handful of "but God" moments in scripture that I call divine reversals. Ephesians chapter 2 contains one of my favorites. "We were dead, doomed, and damned, but God... is so rich in mercy..." I love those two words..."but God." Every time you find that divine reversal in scripture, stop and ponder it, let it s...

Send me a Text Message! If there was one and only one question we should ask ourselves each new day, perhaps it could be, every morning, "How well do I know Jesus? And do I know Him better now than I did last year at this time?" Jesus once was overheard praying, he said, "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (Jo...

Send me a Text Message! Long ago...before all of this grand and awesome creation was even a gleam in Father God's eye; Paul says that God loved us and chose us. He created you in his image. He fashioned your heart with his heart as a model. At the beginning, the warrior-poet David wrote, as he formed you in your mother's womb...he dreamed dreams about your life and he looked forward to a...

Send me a Text Message! Jesus once asked a man, a man who had been an invalid for 38 years, a man who was doing everything he could (which wasn't much) to be healed, "Do you want to be made well?" Before you think, like I did, "that's a dumb question Jesus," ask yourself, "Do I want to be blessed?" That's the question we start with in Ephesians 1.  And...

Send me a Text Message! I love the book of Ephesians because Paul had a never dying hope for the church. Even while he was in prison, his soul soars with hope for the church. Ephesians speaks to me as an individual of my journey to Jesus, but even more it proclaims hope, God-dreamed, Spirit-inspired, Christ-built hope for the church…and at least in part, that’s what I hope we all take away from ou...

Send me a Text Message! What is it that makes one person open to God and the next person closed? What is it that gives Julie the eyes to see what God is doing while Joe is blind? Why does Sam keep running into divine appointments with God while Sally has nothing to share? It isn't gender or religion. It isn't culture or how well you've got it all together. Sometimes it seems like th...

Send me a Text Message! We are starting a new chapter in our podcast on Paul’s "Letters from Prison," the prison epistles. I know at the end of the Psalms Project, I said that we were heading to the old testament book of Daniel, which I love, but as I dove into it, I just had a sense that it was a podcast series for a different time. So we are going from the Old Testament to the New Test...

Send me a Text Message! What if we become a people of one book? Throughout history, people have either loved or hated the Word of God. They have tried to change it, modify it, undermine its authority, water down its conviction. Dictators, have tried to get it out of their nation, yet they are all dead, and the Word of God still lives today. But what they couldn’t do…we do for them, if we do not li...

Send me a Text Message! And now we have come to an end. Wrap-up #2 will be my last podcast…on the Psalms…at least for now…who knows maybe someday I’ll come back and do my middle 40. But for now, a few more wrap-up thoughts. In the last episode, I commented on a fact that I only recently discovered…that the Psalms were written and collected over the course of 1000 years.  That’s a bit mind-boggling...

Send me a Text Message! As I look back over the last 50+ episodes in the Psalms, one of the major themes that has impacted me is the call to "Be different." That challenge is woven throughout the Psalms. It’s woven throughout the Bible, but I see it especially in the Psalms. Be different. Don’t be like the ungodly. Mediate on His Word. Be different. Don’t oppress the marginalized in your...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 150 says, "Let everyone who has breath praise the Lord." Or as we have suggested, "let every breath be an act of worship." No breath is wasted if every breath is worship. So don't waste your breath. Let everything that breathes use every breath, till our last breath, because no breath of worship is a wasted breath.    So we started in the last...

Send me a Text Message! This psalm is the grand finale of the Book of Psalms, and it's not just any ordinary psalm. It's a celebration of praise, a cosmic symphony of worship, and a reminder that our connection with God goes far beyond the daily stuff we seek .  Psalm 150 is often referred to as the "Hallelujah Chorus" of the Psalms. It is another call to cosmic, universal prai...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 148 is an invitation to all of creation…an invitation to join a cosmic hallelujah choir in a boisterous cheer of joy to God. It’s an invitation to an already-started always on-going party of praise. And it’s as all-inclusive as you can get, every created thing is invited to the party of praise. AND I can't help but think it is also an invitation to play. Yep, not...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 146 is a psalm of grateful trust in God’s faithfulness. It contrasts putting our trust in God vs. putting our trust in political leaders. It’s really a question of which Kingdom are you seeking? The Kingdom of God or the kingdoms of this world. Psalm 147 celebrates the greatness of God and His care for His creation. But inserted in the midst of his care for creation a...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 145 is an ode to the beyond imagination greatness and goodness of God.  His greatness is beyond understanding, but so is His goodness. And when I think of the goodness of God, I'm drawn to His heart. The Psalmist writes, "The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich (abounding, overflowing) in love." That's a great heart. Listen,...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 91 stands on stark contrast to Psalm 142 from the last episode. Psalm 142 is David’s cave psalm. It’s a tough one, one where he pours out his complaints to God, one where he brings his fears and loneliness and sense of betrayal and doubt to God. He brings them all with open hands to God and cries out, “I have no refuge and no one cares for my life!” Psalm 91 (suggeste...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 142 arises out of one of the most difficult seasons of David’s life. He calls it a "prayer from the cave." It's a powerful expression of David's raw emotions during a singularly challenging chapter of his story. David is desperate, taking refuge in a cave while on the run from King Saul. He pours out his heart to God, expressing deep distress and d...

Send me a Text Message! We know objects by their characteristics, but we know people by their stories. In the first two episodes on Psalm 139, we heard over and over again that God knows our story. That is at the heart of a yada (knowing) relationship. But if we want yada, it's not enough for Him to know our story, we need to know his story. The reality is that our story alone can't make...

Send me a Text Message! One way evangelicals, love to describe our faith is that we say we have a "personal relationship with God."  Those four words slip off our tongues with ease.  "It's not about religion," we proclaim, "it's about relationship, a personal relationship with God."  To be honest I like the description.  "Yada" is the Hebrew word t...

Send me a Text Message! Artistic people fascinate me.  When I look at a blank canvas, all I see is a blank canvas; when a painter looks at a blank canvas she sees a picture waiting to be born.  How does a sculptor look at a piece of marble and see a statue?  How does an architect look at an empty space and see a building?  Do you realize that Creator God is an artist? And His favorite medium is yo...

Send me a Text Message! Psalm 100 says that we enter his gates with thanksgiving...what if that's the only way we enter his gates? What if gratitude is the non-option knock on the door, key to the gates of his presence. Gratitude works because it brings us into the presence of the one who gives us more than our works deserve. And as we come into his presence we learn to become more aware of h...

Send me a Text Message! Last year, the surgeon general of the United States said that the greatest epidemic we are facing right now is an epidemic of loneliness. John Cacioppo, director for Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, is the world's leading expert on loneliness. In his landmark book, on loneliness, he describes how profoundly the epidemic of loneliness is affecting the b...