In his book 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, Tony Reinke outlines specific ways in which our increasingly digitized lives are negatively impacting us. The eleventh way, according to his book, is that we are becoming more harsh toward one another. It does seem, for some reason, that there are statements we would never say face to face that seem to fly from our fingertips when we start typing on ...  Read More

Little Parts of a Larger Story   In Exodus 6 the Lord is working with Moses and the Israelites in their discouragement, encouraging them to trust in him in the middle of their increasing hardship in Egypt. Then, smack dab in the middle of the chapter, there pops up a long genealogy, an endless series of seemingly trivial names that don’t seem to have anything to do with anything. So, why would the...  Read More

Remember the Larger Story   In Exodus 5 the Israelites’ situation in Egypt gets harder. Similarly, life has gotten harder for us over the past four months, with a virus-based pandemic being thrown on top of all of our already ongoing struggles in life. At the beginning of Exodus 6 the Lord reminds Moses that he is writing a larger story, and that the immediate circumstances of chapter 5 are not th...  Read More

Life has been anything but normal…it’s been filled with trouble! When trouble hits us from all sides, lots of things get knocked off track like our routines, comforts, plans, emotions and even our beliefs. We’re plagued with uncertainty, fears and questions we can’t answer. These troubling times can bring us face-to-face with what we really believe or hope in, whether it’s true or false. Often in ...  Read More

As the latest round of racially-based sin has struck our society over the past few weeks, I have thought back to the tension I felt in the sermons I preached on race about a year and a half ago. In one sense, addressing the sin of racism is simple: to demean or dismiss or devalue anyone on account of their skin color is a sin in the eyes of God. Furthermore, the Bible is clear over and over again ...  Read More

Biblical Descriptions of God   While the Bible provides for us some formal/official names of God (i.e. Yahweh, Jehovah, Adonai, Elohim, etc.), there is also an extensive list of comparisons used to help us get a glimpse of him and his character. Here is a sample list, though by no means exhaustive, of various images God is compared to: Lion (Isaiah 31:4)Eagle (Deut. 32:11)Lamb (Isaiah 53:7)Hen (Ma...  Read More