“He rescued us from the power of darkness” (1:13). Do you believe there is a power of darkness? I read the news, I see what’s going on around the world…
Some of you may know Lou Reed’s song “Perfect Day.” At one point in the song, he repeats, four times—as if it’s a part of the song he wants us…
Tornadoes, hurricanes, fires—our lives can be turned upside down, so quickly, so completely. The news cameras are almost always there, after, on the scene, filming people carefully picking their way…
We don’t tend to get all excited about a doctrine of the Church. Just to use the word doctrine sort of begins to kill the joy of the Living Word,…
Paul and Silas, still in Philippi, encounter a girl, a slave girl. That wasn’t unusual. This slave girl is possessed; a spirit is in her, that, as spirits do, reveals…
Before Paul and Timothy arrive in Philippi, they had tried to make Jesus known in a couple other places. Luke tells us “the Spirit did not let them” (16:6, 7). …
None of us are immune from the Us/Them mentality. Our interpretation of Scripture, in a way, permits such thinking: Jesus tells us there will be a final accounting, where those…
There are many place names in the Bible. If we had been born and raised in that part of the world, these names would be like saying Odessa, Laredo, Amarillo,…
Saul didn’t know Jesus. Blind, thrown down in the dust there on the road, Saul calls the one speaking to him Lord (9:5): whoever is speaking to him has authority…
I never took George Burns to be an especially religious man. I was surprised, then, to hear this bit of religious wisdom from none other than George Burns, who said,…