Tag: sin

Finney: Humility, Prayer, & the Arm of God

  

In reading through Charles Finney’s Revival Lectures again, I was struck by how contemporary many of his statements are. Yes, he wrote this in the nineteenth century, but the application to what we are experiencing today is evident. See if you agree. In a section called “When a Revival May Be Expected,” he declares, When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and humbles and distresses Christians. Sometimes Christians do not seem to mind anything about the wickedness around them. Or,… Read more »

The Supreme Court vs. God’s Court

  

All day Tuesday, I was seeing tweets via my Twitter account that expressed optimism that the Supreme Court would uphold the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] because it wouldn’t want to repeat the mistake of Roe v. Wade. I was not nearly as optimistic. Technically, the optimists were correct; the Court stopped short of declaring that same-sex marriage should be legal throughout the nation. But the effect of its decision in Windsor—and its punt on the Prop 8 case—is not… Read more »

Lewis: No Corner without God

  

As Christians, we want to believe the best about people. We seek to look beyond what they are now to what they may become once they get their lives in sync with the Lord. Yet we cannot ignore the sinfulness of man; we need to be realistic. C. S. Lewis provides us with a perspective we need to keep in mind in our dealings with everyone. I have two short quotes for you today, but they are related. Let’s begin… Read more »

Natural Disasters & the Will of God

  

On this day after the horrendous tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma, we feel for the families who lost children or other loved ones. By all accounts, this had to be one of the worst tornadoes in American history. Normally, they don’t stay on the ground as long as this one did, and the winds may have approached 200 miles per hour. No sin caused this; it was what is usually termed a “natural” disaster. Some people promote a theology that… Read more »

The Sense of Sin

  

We live in an age when the idea of sin is dismissed as a relic of an outmoded religious system designed to suppress one’s desires for happiness. As we’ve seen so abundantly recently, in our entertainment media and all the way to the Supreme Court, equality has now been applied to same-sex relationships. Anyone who disagrees with this new enlightenment is archaic. Our society needs the message that is at the very ground level of Christian understanding: all men are… Read more »

Why We Must Judge

  

Every Sunday, I post a passage of Scripture without commentary. Although I often use Scripture during the week as foundational to my reasoning, I like to let it speak for itself once a week. I trust the Lord will use it to minister to someone; His Word will do that. Yesterday, though, the passage I quoted was from Matthew 7, part of the Sermon on the Mount, and it centered on judging others. While it speaks quite clearly to me,… Read more »

The Narcissistic Personality in a Position of Power

  

In church last Sunday, my pastor spoke about people who are fundamentally narcissistic, which is just another way of saying people are principally self-centered, i.e., sinful. As he was going down a list of traits for the narcissistic personality, my wife and I immediately related it to our most prominent political figure. Here’s the list of the manifestations of narcissistic personality disorder. See if you can catch the drift to whom this might apply. According to a medical encyclopedia, narcissistic… Read more »