A Stranger in the House of God

Send us Fan Mail Jesus' last words were those of a victor, not a victim. They are the words of one who knows he is death's master. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for the Lifeway publication Mature Living and is the author of 16 books. His latest book, On Things Above: The Earthly...

Send us Fan Mail Some have called Jesus' seven statements from the cross his last words. Among these seven sayings are three prayers. Jesus' three prayers from the cross help us to place the suffering of Christ in a larger context. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for the Lifeway pu...

Send us Fan Mail Several years ago, at the Bible college where I taught, news reached the campus that a revival had broken out among the students of another school. It was much like the recent event at Asbury University, though on a smaller scale. The stories we heard were similar. Students knelt and wept at the front of the chapel as they asked God to forgive their sins. There was singing and con...

Send us Fan Mail In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the first spirit to visit Ebenezer Scrooge is the ghost of Christmas past. Scrooge notes the spirit’s small stature and asks, “Long Past?” “No. Your past,” the ghost replies. Dickens is on to something here because this spirit often visits us at this time of year. The season of Advent, by its nature, implies a forward trajectory. It celebrate...

Send us Fan Mail December is the season when tinsel-haloed angels draped in bedsheets announce the birth of Christ to bathrobe-clad shepherds on the church stage. There is a kind of charm in the way we tell the nativity story that might fool people into thinking it is merely a rustic folktale. But the Bible's account of the birth of Christ is not a children's story. Dr. John Koessler is...

Send us Fan Mail Christmas was important to me even before I called myself a Christian, though admittedly, this was mainly for non-religious reasons. I’ve long suspected that I have always loved Christmas more than any other holiday, not because of its spirituality but because it purchased my affections. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Insti...

Send us Fan Mail Heaven has fallen on hard times. In Christian thinking, looking forward to heaven is no longer fashionable. Jeffrey Burton Russell observes in his book Paradise Mislaid, "Heaven has been shut away in a closet by the dominant intellectual trends of the past few centuries."[1] There are a number of reasons for this. To some, the idea of looking forward to going to heaven s...

Send us Fan Mail It's getting to look a lot like Easter. Which, frankly, isn't saying that much. Between Christmas and Easter, it's plain to see which holiday is the favored child of the church calendar. If Christmas is warm, Easter is cold. As it approaches, we don't seem to know whether to be happy or sad. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeri...

Send us Fan Mail I have noticed that periods of social unrest are often accompanied by a corresponding outbreak of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am referring, of course, to the accompanying blizzard of memes on Facebook and Twitter that display a quote famously (and probably incorrectly) attributed to Bonhoeffer: "Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." In most cases where it appears,...

Send us Fan Mail In the Gospels, Jesus is called the Holy One of God on two occasions. The first time was by a demon (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34). The second was by Peter when many of the disciples were grumbling about the difficulty of Jesus' teaching. It is a reflection of the seriousness of our problem with holiness that the demons recognized who Jesus was before His own disciples did. It would...

Send us Fan Mail Every age seems to have its preferred image of Jesus. The Scriptures do not portray Jesus as a symbol or even an archetype but as a living person. Yet there is some variation in the portrait they offer. We might think of the Gospels as a hall of portraits, with each episode intended to highlight some facet of the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are not interested in knowing Ch...

Send us Fan Mail Redemption is a drama unfolding along two storylines. The story of the Magi is a reminder that the journey of redemption includes evil as well as good. God is not responsible for the evil, but He is not a hostage to it either. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for the Lifeway...

Send us Fan Mail These days Christmas music seems to like to portray Mary as fragile and uncertain. Mary was probably young, but I do not think she was fragile. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for the Lifeway publication Mature Living and is the author of 16 books. His latest book, On Things...

Send us Fan Mail Christ's command to point out a brother's fault in Matthew 18:15 is a hard pill to swallow in an age that regards amiability to be the chief of all Christian virtues. It doesn’t fit the image many of us have of Jesus. The contemporary church favors an uncritical and accepting Jesus. This popular Jesus doesn’t point fingers but stands with arms wide, ready to welcome ever...

Send us Fan Mail Tertullian, the second-century church father from Carthage, wrote that observers of the early Christians marveled at what they saw. "See how they love one another," they said. Those early pagans made their observations from the outside. They saw the behavior of Christians after grace and the gospel had done their work. Beyond their vision was the underworking of the fles...

Send us Fan Mail When I was a pastor, it felt like the people who visited our church were looking for the congregational equivalent of a supermodel. We were a good little church but never quite good enough for them. The congregation was too small, and we didn’t have enough programs. It irritated me at the time. But when I became a civilian and started looking for a church myself, I saw things diff...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever wondered how fast God is? It sounds like the kind of question a child might ask. But for many of us, the honest answer would probably be, "Not as fast as we would like Him to be." Although 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not slow, waiting is so much a feature of the redemption story that Revelation 6:11 tells us that even the souls in heaven must wait (Rev. 6:...

Send us Fan Mail Books about prayer never seem to fit my situation. They either assume that I don’t want to pray or that I don’t know how. Neither is really the case. My problem lies elsewhere. They are relational. I don’t like the way God seems to treat me when I pray. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the W...

Send us Fan Mail Some aspects of our development are programmed by heredity and DNA. But not everything. There are things we can do to nurture growth, or we can hamper it.  The same is true in the spiritual realm. What is the secret to spiritual growth? Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for th...

Send us Fan Mail Every generation seems to have its own idol. Each one represents the spirit of the age, a false god who shapes the ethic of the culture at large. All too often, these idols find their way into the church. These days the idol of the age is best represented by what I would call “the cult of nice.” The cult of nice is a code that shapes ethics and whose appeal springs from its disarm...

Send us Fan Mail The difference between faith, stubborn, and stupid is not as obvious as you might think. To the unbeliever, faith looks like stupid, and to the believer, stupid sometimes looks like faith. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column for the Lifeway publication Mature Living and is the a...

Send us Fan Mail Since I retired, I find myself saying no to things that I once would have been eager to take on. I am not doing the things I thought I would do. Some of those things are no longer of interest to me. Others have grown more difficult, and I am either unwilling or unable to expend the energy. It is unnerving. I find that I am disappointed with myself for the things I no longer want t...

Send us Fan Mail In the early days of my walk with Jesus, it didn’t dawn on me that church was also part of the package. Our family didn’t attend church and now that I thought of myself as a Christian, it seemed unnecessary to me. I had Jesus and the Bible. I had made friends with others who shared my faith. Why ruin it all by adding church into the mix? I had visited a few churches in the past. W...

Send us Fan Mail When Christmas comes around, we remind ourselves of the need to observe it all year. For some reason, we never talk this way about Easter. We celebrate the Christmas spirit, but we seem to know nothing about the Spirit of Easter. We approach Christmas with excitement that builds for months. Its approach is announced with colored lights, a mountain of gifts, and endless parties. We...

Send us Fan Mail These days it is common to treat human beings as if they were only high functioning animals. Humans are indeed creatures. But the Bible teaches that we are much more. This is third in a series on foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. Dr. John Koessler is an award-winning writer and retired faculty emeritus of Moody Bible Institute. John writes the Praying the Word column...