Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling some melancholy. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we’re left standing, watching the Christmas taillights and music fade into the night.

But it’s possible that this moment of melancholy may be the best teaching moment of the whole season. Because as long as the beautiful gifts remain unopened around the tree and the events are still ahead of us, they can appear to be the hope we are waiting for. But when the tree is empty and events are past, we realize we are longing for a lasting hope.

So last night, as Pam and I tucked our kids into bed, we talked about a few t…

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Our good friend, Rick Gamache, preached a wonderful sermon on Isaiah 9:6 last Sunday. And he quoted C.H. Spurgeon reveling in the incarnation:

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." As Jesus Christ is a child in his human nature, he is born, begotten of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. He is as truly-born, as certainly a child, as any other man that ever lived upon the face of the earth. He is thus in his humanity a child born. But as Jesus Christ is God's Son, he is not born; but given, begotten of his Father from before all worlds, begotten—not made, being of the same substance with the Father. The doctrine of the eternal affiliation of Christ is to be re…

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“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

As Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, discovered in Matthew 1-2, that’s just another way of saying that when your plans are detoured and redirected, you find out who’s really charting the course.

Nazareth. It felt good to Joseph to be back home. The same old market and the same old merchants. The same old neighbors with the same old complaints. The same old synagogue and the same old rabbi. 

Oddly, though, the normalcy felt a bit strange after the unexpected adventures of the past couple of years. What an odyssey this simple Galilean carpenter had been on.

It had all started with Mary’s worl…

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Someone asked a great question in response to my post last week on Simon the Pharisee:

Much like the two sons in the prodigal son story, how necessary is it to be the younger son to appreciate the Father?

In other words, do we have to sin more grossly in order to be able to comprehend how much we have been forgiven so that we can "love much"? 

It seems to me that self-righteousness poses challenges that are similar to wealth in terms of how hard it is to get into the kingdom. If you think you are righteous on your own, you don't believe you need the forgiveness Jesus has to offer. If you are wealthy, you do not need the treasures Jesus has to offer. The poor and …

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He had the Holy One of Israel in his house, reclining at his table. The Prophet that Moses had foretold was sharing dinner with him. The Lord of glory, the Resurrection and the Life, was speaking with him face to face. The great climactic moment of history he claimed to be living for had arrived. It should have been a deliriously wonderful, breathtaking honor for Simon to host the Messiah.

But Simon was not amazed.  As he looked at Jesus, all he saw was a dusty Nazarene whose claims could be interpreted as delusional.

And Jesus’ feet were still dirty. Offering foot washing to guests had been a deeply ingrained custom for Near Eastern peoples for thousands of years. To not offer it …

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Did you wake up not feeling like reading your Bible and praying? How many times today have you had to battle not feeling like doing things you know would be good for you?

While it’s true that this is our indwelling sin that we must repent of and fight against, there’s more going on.

Think about this strange pattern that occurs over and over in just about every area of life:

• Good food requires discipline to prepare and eat while junk food tends to be the most tasty, addictive, and convenient.
• Keeping the body healthy and strong requires frequent deliberate discomfort while it only takes constant comfort to go to pot.
• You have to make yourself pick up that n…

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We tend to think of following Jesus as leaving behind the familiar for the unfamiliar. But sometimes, like for the man in Luke 8:26-39, the more difficult call is to go back home.

For the first time in a long time he was in full control of his mind. He could think! No rage. No fear. No torment. Peace like the quiet sea. He actually wanted to keep his clothes on.

But the most strangely wonderful thing of all was his sense of cleanness. His soul was clean.

The tomb-man from Gadara looked up at Jesus again. His lucid mind mulled over the words, “Son of the Most High God.”

Who would have thought that the Son of God looked so much like other Jewish men? He wasn’t very big. The …

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The New Testament makes essential things crystal clear: "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name [besides Jesus] under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Deny that and you deny the gospel. 

But the New Testament also has a category of gospel-informed convictions which are deeply held, sometimes strongly commended, yet are not universal mandates. These are intended by God to shape our kingdom mindset, guard against temptation, and test our hearts. But they are also meant to be adaptable to our particular calling and context. 

One example was Paul's conviction that he should go to extraordinary lengths to keep money from being a hind…

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In staff devotions recently we were in Proverbs 6. Solomon warns his son against the devastation of adultery. In verses 32-33 he writes,

He who commits adultery lacks sense; 
   he who does it destroys himself. 
He will get wounds and dishonor, 
   and his disgrace will not be wiped away.

For Solomon, every warning against adultery must have been haunted by the memory of his father and mother, David and Bathsheba. Imagine what he must have felt. He was the product of a marriage that never should have been.

He watched the royal family, in the middle of Israel's golden age, implode because this union that brought him into existence had come into exis…

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