What is Epiphany? It’s “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”  Christians have celebrated for centuries as the Twelfth Day of Christmas commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles (as represented by the Magi that came to visit).

May you have a “sudden realization” today of the same thing Paul preached to the Gentiles: the unsearchable riches of Christ, the freedom we have through him, and immeasurable love of our Savior (Read Ephesians 3:8-21).

Let’s commit to being in the Word this year…YouVersion has a great compilation of reading plans, from a leisurely stroll of a section over a year to an intense workout of the entire Scriptures in one year—and for every type of reader.  You can also check out a plan John Piper recommends that includes the entire Bible in a year with a 5-day catch-up each month.

How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Giving of our financial resources sacrificially is one of the most powerful testimonies of a Christ-centered life; however, lack of money is not our only source of poverty. What is your poverty? Is it lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That’s the place where God wants to dwell! “How blessed are the poor,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty. We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let’s dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.

Good to be home for Christmas…Day one: snow!!

Glorious, picture-perfect day for a Chargers/Cowboys game!

A phrase coined by Martin Luther to discuss the notion that we are simultaneously righteous and sinful. In his Lectures on Romans, Luther put it this way: “The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the Law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician: they really are sick, but healthy only in hope and in so far as they begin to get better, or, rather: are being healed.”

It’s Advent time again! In Advent, we focus our hearts and minds on and look forward with great anticipation to Christ’s arrival on earth—both his birth and his Second Coming!

“This is love…that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins…And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:10, 14).

It is interesting to listen to believers debate the existence of hell, especially when the debate occurs because a Calvinist is uncomfortable with what it says of a God who elects some to spend eternity there. While I believe that the Truth of predestination or free will doesn’t rest on our ability to understand or like it, I still find myself residing in a world where we receive (or reject) God’s grace as freely as it is offered to us. (More thoughts on Free Will)

Therefore, regarding hell: the concepts of heaven and hell are as intimately connected as those of good and evil. When we are free to do good, we are also free to do evil; when we can say yes to God’s love, the possibility of saying no necessarily exists. Consequently, when there is heaven there also must be hell.

All of these distinctions are made to safeguard the mystery that God wants to be loved by us in freedom. In this sense, strange as it may sound, the idea of hell is good news. Human beings are not robots who have no choices and who—whatever they do in life—end up in God’s Kingdom. No, God loves us so much that God wants to be loved by us in return. And love cannot be forced; it has to be freely given. Hell is the bitter fruit of a final “no” to God.

To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God’s presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because almost without fail, it’s the right way of living that leads to the right way of speaking and not vice versa. When we forgive our neighbors from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak words of gratitude, and when we are hopeful and joyful, we will speak hopeful and joyful words. When our words come too soon and we are not yet living what we are saying, we easily give double messages. Giving double messages - one with our words and another with our actions - makes us hypocrites. May our lives give us the right words and may our words lead us to the right life.

Titled “LUCK,” and that’s an understatement for some of these clips.  Makes you wonder what God is up to!  (Note: I’d love it if someone could explain the tennis clip for me; I can’t figure it out to save my life!)

Consider praying for God’s presence more than his blessings, and you can pray with the apostle Paul that you “may have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19)

How can we not lose our souls when everything and everybody pulls us in the most different directions? How can we “keep it together” when we are constantly torn apart?

Jesus says, regarding the signs of the end of the age: “All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life” (Luke 21:17-19). We can only survive our world when we trust that God knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. We can only keep it together when we believe that it is God who holds us together. We can only win our lives when we remain faithful to the truth that every little part of us—even every hair—is completely safe in the divine embrace of our Lord. To say it differently: When we keep living a life with and for God, there is nothing to fear.

This verse by Lewis Carroll is remarkable for more than its melancholy; it can be read both “across” and “down.”