The Wake-Up Call

It’s easy to focus on the pothole. But what if God is growing something right in the middle of the mess?

Mary, in this quiet and beautiful moment, didn’t understand the “how.” Not by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, she did understand the who that was behind it.

If the people in our nativity sets are wearing shoes, the truth is, none of them should have been—because holy ground was breaking out all around them.

Shame may have stepped into the story of humanity, but the arrival of Jesus into the world was the fulfillment of God’s promise and the coming victory over the Enemy.

Is there a song in your heart that needs to be sung today?

What stories of wonder are we proclaiming, and what are people saying about the work of God in and among us?

How many times does our doubt literally get in the way of the wonder that God has placed in our paths?

What if a waiting season is not a wasted season?

God has more wonder in his hands than we can ever realize. The question is: Are our hands ready to receive all that he has prepared to pour over us?

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19).

The wilderness teaches us a whole new order and a completely new and different way of life. We have been delivered from the empire of Pharaoh to the kingdom of God.

What has the Lord been teaching you through these months together in Exodus? How might you distill a few of the revelations and learnings? How are you being delivered?

In the Old Testament, God is with us. In the post-Pentecost New Testament, God is within us.

The question is not whether we worship; it’s who or what we worship. Whatever or whoever it is that we order our lives around in order to make them work—that is our God.

God is as real to you as your worship is real to him.

This is not a God to hide from but to be hidden in. His presence is healing because his nature is love.

One of the defining identity markers for Christians is that we are resurrection people. This means that we understand that God always has the last word.

Hiddenness is the gift of God to the humble ones, who have traded in their own quest for glory for the pursuit of beholding the glory of Another.

We are conditioned to disbelieve anything that seems too good to be true. And the truth is, there is only one thing in life too good to be true that is actually true: the Word of God.

Our prayers tend toward asking God for many things, but how often are we specifically “inquiring of the Lord” about the matters of our times, the curiosities of our circumstances, and the puzzling dilemmas of our days?

The grace of God is not that he pardons our sin and keeps us out of hell-jail. The grace of God is that he loves us so much he desires us in his presence all the time, constantly, now and forever, world without end, amen.

Becoming Other-centered is the secret to becoming others-centered, which is the outcome of being delivered from self-centeredness.

Here's the most amazing thing about God in the face of controlling idolaters and stiff-necked people. He loves us anyway. 

This psalm celebrates the power and grandeur of the voice of the Lord.

True worship leads to self-sacrificial living. Idolatry (or false worship) leads to self-indulgence. True worship leads to heartfelt repentance. Idolatry (or false worship) leads to sinful revelry.