The cup that the Father gave Christ

We have been reading the Gospels for almost four months in our Bible reading program. For four months we have been consumed with Christ. For four months, each day we have had a new or increasing view of the nature of Christ. Perhaps the temptation has been to think, “there must be something more that […]

The Lord’s prayer

In prayer (when we are genuine and truthful), our hearts are exposed and revealed as in no other way. That is true as well of the heart of Christ, which makes the Lord’s prayer in John 17 a particularly rich and stimulating passage of Scripture. Of this passage, Melanchthon wrote, “There is no voice which […]

Take courage

Jesus never promises His followers a pain and trouble-free life. In fact, He promises just the opposite. There will be troubles, and often those troubles are because we are followers of Him. As two examples, consider: “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted […]

Life on the farm

One of my favorite pictures from my childhood is a picture that was taken of me and my farmer grandfather. I was maybe four or five-years-old and I was standing with my grandfather in one of his fields. He was surveying the crop; I was more interested in the camera. In those years, I would […]

Fearful?

What do you offer a man who is discouraged and hopeless? What do you offer someone whose world is shattered? What do you offer someone who has captured a glimpse into the future, and the fear of it is not startling, but terrifying in its deadliness? What did Jesus offer the disciples? On Thursday night […]

The Father and the Son

Several years ago, Mark Ashton-Smith was on a planned 4-day kayak trip around the Isle of Wight in England when his kayak capsized. Unable to get back into the canoe and in frigid and rough waters, he reached for his phone (which he’d had the foresight to place in a watertight container) and called the […]

Is death reason to doubt God?

This morning I read this sentence from J. I. Packer: “It has become conventional to think as if we are all going to live in this world forever and to view every case of bereavement as a reason for doubting the goodness of God.” And then I read this sentence from Jesus (John 11:14-15): “Lazarus […]

What grace we have received

John 1:16 has long been one of my favorite verses — “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” The verse is written in the context of the coming of the eternally existing Word — the One who is co-existent with God and is God Himself. The Word, the second member […]

John 3:16

Martin Luther called this verse “the gospel in miniature” because there was a sense in which the entire story of the Bible is expounded in it. Just two weeks before he died, he repeated the text with evident ecstasy and added, “What Spartan saying can be compared with this wonderful brevity? It is a Bible […]