Do Not Lust For Results.

Published December 6, 2025

The words were just a passing line, an impromptu cue from my yoga teacher, but they clanged and reverberated in my mind. I shifted into autopilot, moving through the forms. For the rest of the hour, as my body moved, my mind couldn’t stop turning these words over and over. “Do not lust for results.”

For when God seems absent (which feels like most of the time).

Published August 12, 2025

There’s a problem many modern Christians have when they read scripture. Every part of the Bible was written in a culture and time when everyone knew that everything happened because God willed it thus. Good things were God’s blessing. Bad things were God’s punishment. When everything from the weather to invasion is seen as the […]

Maybe you need to steward your attention?

Published July 10, 2025

This summer, my family took a week-long vacation to Central Oregon. One kid is in college. The other will graduate from high school next year. We are acutely feeling the transition that comes as our children become adults. This may be our last family vacation like this. So, we wanted to cram in as much […]

Is Shame Keeping us from Following Jesus?

Published June 16, 2025

Jesus washing the disciples’ feet in the Upper Room is a scene familiar to most of us. He stands up from the dinner table. He removes his outer robe and wraps himself in a towel, the garb of a house slave. He picks up a pitcher of water and moves toward his friends to do […]

Constantine wasn’t the problem. Here’s why that matters today.

Published November 14, 2024

Of course, Constantine is worthy of criticism on many fronts. He was one of the earliest celebrity conversions we know of. He may have been the first high-profile person to convert to Christianity for purposes unrelated to Jesus. And certainly, He was a bloody, vindictive Emperor who used the violent power of his station to […]

Two Preachers React to God’s Love. Which One Speaks for You?

Published September 26, 2024

How far would you be willing to go to ensure that the folks you hate don’t receive God’s mercy? That’s the question that lies at the heart of the Jonah story. Most people think the whaleis the point, but that’s a distraction. Let’s briefly recall the story. And then I’ll share a fascinating connection with […]

Hey Church, What Are We Building?

Published May 31, 2024

Standing on a broad, grassy hill in central Türkiye, I had a revelation. The hill was thick with thistles, periodically broken through by irregular bleached stones. It lay about a mile south of a rural highway, surrounded by farmland. If you stumbled on the site accidentally, you’d have no idea what you were looking at […]

No, Love Does Not Require Unity.

Published October 11, 2023

I’ve not experienced a time that felt more divided. Pick the area of discourse, and people are forming camps, drawing lines of who is in and who is out, and naming the folks on the other side of the line as enemies. The emotional temperature seems to ping-pong between frustration and rage. In this environment, […]

The Lamb is the Key: Why So Many Christians Read Revelation Wrong

Published May 23, 2022

John’s Apocalypse has been a troublesome book since the beginning. Many interpreters, taking their cue from the Revelator’s promise to “show what must soon take place,” have seen in Revelation a coded sequence of end-time events. The only work remaining is to decode the symbols to reveal the book’s one true meaning. Or is it?