The Problem of Guilt
Guilt is a lot like an iceberg. You don’t see much above the surface, but if you really look, you’ll see it’s under everything. So how do you deal with a guilty conscience? In Psalm 51, David has been plunged—through the shock of recognizing the mag...
The Problem of Anxiety
Of the articles and books I survey on worry or anxiety, they almost always say, “The things you’re worried about may never happen. So don’t think about them.” But in Psalm 27, David does the opposite: he visualizes the worst things that can happen. W...
The Search for Values
A Newsweek cover story said that after a 30-year spree, our entire society is waking up with a monstrous hangover, facing a values vacuum. It said that we realize unlimited personal freedom is not the way to build a society, but now we face the quest...
The Search for Identity
When it comes to building up identity and self-esteem, I’m afraid Americans are very pragmatic—and our pragmatism gets to us. Our books and articles say if you want self-esteem, you should lose weight, change your friends, switch your career, and so...
The Search for Certainty
A fool can be brilliant and a fool can be stupid. Foolishness is not a function of your intelligence. Foolishness is a function of how you use your intelligence. The Bible says every human being is born with a heavy streak of foolishness. It’s like...
The Search for Transcendence
There is a thirst in the human heart that will not be denied. It cannot be denied. That thirst is for transcendence. Transcendence is intimacy with the infinite. Psalm 63 is about the search for transcendence. It says there is irreducible knowledge,...
The Search for Substance
A plant without roots is at best a tumbleweed. Is a tumbleweed freer than an oak tree? Yeah, it’s free to be blown about forever. There is what the Bible calls a rootlessness and a weightlessness about our society right now. Many of the problems you...
The Search for Happiness
Have you in this modern world learned how to become happy and stay happy? I hope you don’t think that’s a trivial question. Because if you read the psychology books, the urban planning books, the biochemistry books, the political science books, they’...
Converted by the Spirit
Jesus, in Matthew 18, uses a word for conversion that means to turn completely around and face in a whole new direction. That’s a perfect image of what Christian conversion really is. Christian conversion is a radical inner transformation. But it’s...
Converted by the Resurrection
Christianity was originally never understood as a set of teachings that one took on. Christianity was a power that took you up. It completely turned you inside out, transformed you from the inside. The classic example is the conversion of Paul. Paul...
Converted by the Cross
Conversion is a radical change of life. And in its early days, Christianity grew through conversions. It spread so rapidly that it changed a hostile society completely. What does it mean to become a Christian? By looking at the conversions in Acts, w...
A Woman, a Slave and a Gentile
Christianity was born into a culture that was every bit as resistant and unsympathetic to its claims as ours is. So how did its message come into the lives of people and actually change them? In Acts, we have more case studies of conversion than any...
Stay With the Ship
The biggest problem people have in believing in God is probably the problem of evil and suffering. In the Greek imagination, the voyage was a metaphor for your life’s journey, and a storm was a metaphor for the evil and suffering and tragedies that...
No Other Name
Christianity was born into a society hostile to its claims. And the claim that was most revolting to that society is also what our society sees as the most repugnant: the shocking claim that salvation is found in no one else. It’s critical to realize...
To an Unknown God
The culture in which Christianity was born was every bit as skeptical of the claims of Christianity as ours is. But the case for Christianity was made so strongly that skeptical people believed in numbers so great that it changed the entire Roman cul...