The Good Portion

On the day Jesus rose from the dead, two of his disciples took a walk to Emmaus. On the way, while they discussed the events of the prior three days, “Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Lk 24:15b-16). When this “stranger” asked what they were talking about, they related their grief and confusion. They thought Jesus would be the promised Messiah, but he had been crucified. And now some women were spreading a rumor that he had risen from the dead. At this, Jesus replied,  “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets , he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk 24:25-27). What about you? Do you have a hard time seeing Jesus in the Old Testament? Do the New Testament’s references to the Old seem obscure? If so, the firs...

When I first became a single mom, I was terrified. I had drifted from church years prior, so I decided it was time to go back and start trying to live like a Christian. During that time I was given a book on how to train children the “Bible” way. In it were the secrets to raising children so well-trained and obedient that they would assuredly obey God and accept the gospel.  This book taught me to read all the worst motives into my children's hearts, to see all their undesirable behavior as rebellion—not incomprehension or exhaustion, not immaturity or hunger, not frustration or confusion, not inability or fear—only rebellion. Their salvation or damnation hung on my ability, by force of will and use of the rod, to train them to be perfectly obedient.  If I had actually read the Bible for myself and understood God’s character and his grace, I would have thrown that book away. Instead I let it destroy me. Though I couldn’t bring myself to implement its harsh methods, my heart wa...

 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,   that whoever believes in him should not perish  but have eternal life.”    John 3:16 Time for true confessions. When you recognized the familiar verse above, did you slow down to treasure it, or did you breeze through it to get to the article? I hope you slowed down. But if you didn’t, you’re not alone. I memorized John 3:16 when I was a little girl in Sunday school, and I’ve breezed through it ever since. Even so, it was this Sunday school doctrine of God’s love that kept the door to repentance propped open until the day I got saved at age forty. If I’d never heard that God loved the world, I would never have had the courage to run to Him with my truckload of sin and shame. Once I did, I was so overjoyed by his love and acceptance that I wanted to share it with the world. I told anyone who would listen. I made my way back to church and drank up whatever I could about the God I now loved. I learned ...

The words “spiritual warfare” mean many things to many people. But what does the Bible actually teach about it? Much of our confusion and misinformation comes from our habit of trying to understand scriptures apart from their context.  Ephesians 6 is a perfect example. If you are not carefully tracking with Paul’s train of thought throughout the letter, his call to spiritual arms at the end seems like an afterthought, disconnected from the rest of the letter. When you see it this way, you are left trying to fill in the meaning on your own. But Paul’s teaching on spiritual warfare is not an afterthought. It does not begin in chapter 6, it’s a culmination of the entire letter: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, a...

What do you think of when you hear the words “Spirit-filled”? What does a Spirit-filled church look like? Ephesians 5:18 commands us to be “filled with the Spirit,” but how do we do it, and what does it look like when we do?  In Ephesians, the apostle Paul gives us one of the Bible’s loftiest expositions of God’s purpose for the church, a plan forged before the beginning when God “chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” and “predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will . . . a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth . . .This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (1:4-5,10; 3:11). It is in this context of God’s eternal plan that we can best understand the work of the Holy Spirit in the church.  The Holy Spirit permeates Ephesians, just as he permeates every aspect of the church and the Christian ...

Like just about every other girl of my generation, I loved the Brady Bunch. I wanted to be Marsha, the oh-so-cool and beautiful older sister, or at the very least to be as cute as little Cindy, who everyone adored. Even to be Jan, the middle daughter, would be an improvement over my bony, four-eyed, gap-toothed self. The only child in my household, I envied those sibling relationships. I wanted brothers to fight with who secretly really loved me. And, of course, I wished for such parents: kind, respectful, fair, caring, young, hip, and wealthy. Ah, the Brady's! They had it all. They even had a live-in maid. No wonder they were all smiles! But there was one smile in the Brady household that puzzled me. Alice was neither young nor beautiful. She had no husband, no child, no car, and no home of her own. Sure, she had the occasional date with Sam, that non-committal butcher, but she spent every other waking moment in her maid’s uniform serving this family and smiling as if she were cle...