Remember the story of Narcissus? He’s the proud, beautiful man in the Greek myth who saw his reflection in a pool, fell in love with it, couldn’t tear himself away, and it killed him.

Mirrors are very dangerous for proud people. Believe me. I speak from experience.

But mirrors present most of us with a different danger than Narcissus. When we look into a mirror we do not see enchanting beauty, nor do we see the glory of God imaging forth in the indescribably complex, ingenious, phenomenal, spectacular miracle that is a human being. What we see mainly are defects.

The captivating power mirrors wield over us is not what we see, but what we want to see. What we see is deficiency. What we …

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How does God want us to deal with the emotion we call disappointment?

Joseph Barsabbas was disappointed by Jesus. Joseph was a candidate to replace Judas Iscariot as one of the Twelve, but when the lot was cast it “fell on Matthias” (Acts 1:26). I’ll bet that was a blow.

The Bible never mentions Joseph again. But tradition says he later became the Bishop of Eleutheropolis (32 miles southwest of Jerusalem) and died a martyr. Assuming that’s accurate, imagine what Joseph may have learned about disappointment and how he might have counseled a disappointed young disciple twenty years later.

________

Bishop Joseph looked at his sullen disciple. “You’re disappointed.”

“Yes,” replied Prim…

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I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me (Job 30:20-21).

These words came out of the mouth of the man God considered the most blameless and upright on earth at the time (Job 1:8).

Thank you, God, for these words! Thank you that the Bible is so guileless. It says it like it is, and sometimes just what it feels like. Most of its heroes are unvarnished and clay-footed. Sometimes they wonder if you’re cruel. That’s a mercy to all of us shortsighted, weak, doubting, clay-footed stumblers. There’s hope for us.

Can you identify with Job? You cry out to God in your affliction and you see nothing change. It seems like he’s j…

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Malaise is a mercy that feels yucky.

Malaise is that feeling you get when you’re getting sick but you don’t quite know it yet. It’s a vague sense of dis-ease. Your energy is draining. You just want to lie down. Emotionally, you might feel discouraged, irritable, depressed, or cynical for no identifiable reason. You ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me?”

Precisely what you’re supposed to ask. Malaise is the early warning system God designed for the body. It’s telling you something destructive is attacking your bodily systems. It’s a messenger running ahead of an invading enemy alerting us to get our defenses in place.

The soul also has its diseases and they are more deadly than the …

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W. Somerset Maugham once said, “There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.”

With networks and newspapers broadcasting another New York Congressman’s sordid sexual secrets, and the public in a swirl of surprise and horror (and prurient fascination), it’s good for us to ponder again the profound grace that Jesus Christ extends to sinners like us, guilty of shameful things.

History has tended to give Mary Magdalene a reputation as a woman with a sordid sexual past. We’re not sure why. The Bible tells us little about Mary other than she had seven demons cast out of her, was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, saw whe…

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24.5 million

That’s how many audio and video files were downloaded from our website in the first 10 months of this fiscal year (July 2010-April 2011).

That’s almost 1 download per second 24 hours a day for 304 days.

To give you some perspective, from the day DG started in 1994 until the day in 2006 when we put all of our audio and video messages online for free, we did not even distribute a total of 500,000 tapes, CDs, and DVDs.

That’s less than 2% in 12 years of what we distributed in just 10 months of this year.

Two Reasons For This Rise

Why the exponential increase? There are two primary reasons.

First, the Internet is far more accessible to more people around the world …

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If you’re a romantic (and I think you should be) you love the book of Ruth.

This short story almost seems like it was made for film. It has all the components of a great romance: tragedy, loyalty, courage, virtuous love, unlikely lovers, a great obstacle, the triumphant moment, the happy ending, and the hand of Providence guiding it all. It’s a feel-good read.

But I don’t think Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz experienced it as romantic until they saw it all in retrospect.

Just think of chapter one. Naomi thinks her life is over. At this point she’s more “Ecclesiastes” than “Ruth.” With her husband and two sons dead, she has nothing. God appears to have turned on her. All she has to look forward …

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Princess Diana once said, “Only do what your heart tells you.”

This is a creed believed by millions. It’s a statement of faith in one of the great pop cultural myths of the Western world. It’s a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies, and songs.

It states that your heart is a compass inside of you that will point you to your own true north if you can just see it clearly. Your heart is a true guide that will lead you to happiness if you can just tune into it. We are lost, and our heart will save us.

This sounds so simple and liberating. It’s tempting to believe.

Until you consider that your heart has sociopathic tendencies.

Think about it for a moment. What does your heart…

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You can often tell what mattered most to a person by what they leave behind when they depart this world.

What Jesus left behind is more astonishing when you think of what he didn’t leave:

• No wife or child
• No house
• No clothes
• No money
• No business
• No writings (directly authored while he was on earth)
• No hymns
• No portrait
• No buildings
• No cross remnant
• No confirmed gravesite

So scant a corporeal trace did Jesus leave that some have claimed he was a myth. The only things he left behind were people who believed his gospel. Jesus left his Word (teaching) and his church (a few hundred people).

And these two legacies changed the course of history. They are, in fact, what history is all about.

…

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Pontius Pilate is picture of worldly power. He is competent and calculating, he is pragmatic and self-preserving. But for all his shrewdness, his life demonstrates that the “Word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth.”¹

Imagine a conversation over breakfast between Pilate and his wife, Procula, on the Sunday morning following Jesus’ crucifixion, just before they receive word that the tomb is empty.

__________

“You’re quiet again this morning, Procula. Still brooding over the Galilean?”

“I can’t shake this ominous feeling that something is going to happen because he was executed. My dream was so disturbing, so vivid.”

“Well, I can’t govern by the superstitious dreams …

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