The appalling death of George Floyd rightly upset the nation, but we’ve also watched people loot and burn businesses (many of them owned by African Americans), beat the innocent (some of them African Americans), and injure and kill police officers (sometimes African American police officers). We shouldn’t be surprised. There is something going on here […]
How the Fear of Death Drives Anarchy Read More »
My last post was How God Can Use COVID-19 to Bless Us. In this post I’ll offer steps to find peace during the pandemic. Look Away First, although it’s hard not to watch the news which so often seems like a slow-motion train wreak (I cannot look, but I cannot look away!), we shouldn’t spend
We Can Find Peace During Pandemic Read More »
We’re all struggling because of COVID-19. Some are very sick, some have lost loved ones, many have lost their jobs, our economy is endangered, and most are frightened at the prospect of getting sick and perhaps dying. At the very least, we are tired of being cooped up at home. So, how can God use
How Can God Use COVID-19 to Bless Us? Read More »
It’s with great sadness but also joyful expectancy that I’m announcing that as of fall 2020, I will no longer be teaching at Talbot School of Theology. I say “great sadness” because I love our department and my last sixteen years (my first year was part time) teaching for Biola University have been the best
Why I’m Leaving Talbot School of Theology Read More »
Not long after a famous Christian leader’s son took his life, I was speaking at a church in Carlsbad, California, on “Crusades, Inquisitions, Witch-hunts, Slavery, and the Oppression of Women.” After my presentation, I took questions and the first question was from a slender, 40 something brunette. She asked, “Can a Christian commit suicide and
Can a Christian Commit Suicide and Go to Heaven? Maybe, Maybe Not Read More »
In the last two posts we’ve seen that God uses suffering to protect us, and we’ve seen that God uses suffering to purify us. In this post, we come to an often underappreciated aspect of how God uses suffering in our lives for our good: God uses suffering to prove us. Proverbs 17:3 says, “The
God Uses Suffering to Prove Us Read More »
In my last post, we saw how God uses suffering to protect us from future harm. Related to that, in this post we’ll see how God uses suffering to purify us. This, of course, is folly to the non-Christian. Only those who, as Jesus said, “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6) will understand this
God Uses Suffering to Purify Us Read More »
As I mentioned in my second post on suffering, for us to triumph in suffering we need to know what God is seeking to accomplish in and through us by our suffering. If we don’t know why we’re suffering, then suffering will be insufferable. But it’s amazing what people can endure if they think suffering
God Uses Suffering to Protect Us Read More »
Prayer for healing needs to be understood in the context of God our Father. Consider that the Lord invented the father/child relationship and He tells us that we have that relationship to Him. But, if God is our loving Father, there’s nothing to work up—we don’t need to continue to say that God is going
Prayer for Healing—3: God’s Our Father Read More »
