In John 2.12-22 the most religious, moral, successful, bible-believing, respected, God following, law keeping, and holy people on the planet (the Jews) are blocking the Gentiles (non-Jews) from the gracious love of God. How?
In other words, in this world Jesus has come too, there is something fundamentally wrong with our lives, marriages, homes, relationships, and all levels of life itself. There is no wine. Why does life eventually run out of wine?
Jesus is the Heavenly-Human Hero connecting God and sinners together in friendship in himself. Come and see, and then go reach people by making friends and having gospel conversations.
Do we activate God by our devotion and discipleship? Do we make God real and active in our lives, relationships, work, church, ministry, and places in life? The religious leaders in Jesus’ day thought so…
Faith is harder than we think. Skeptics are, well, skeptical: “How can there be just one true religion?” “How can you take the Bible literally?” Young adults struggle to believe like their parents. Mountain top spiritual experiences never last, twenty-four hours is even asking a lot.
The struggle for meaning can shatter you. Karen is strong, confident, and capable. She is successful. Women want to be her. Men want to marry her. Then she failed, very publicly. Her confidence collapsed. She became insecure, introspective, and incapable.
Seeing more changes everything. 2 Kings 6.8-23 employs language for sight fifteen times. This is a story about seeing more. But what happens when we do not see enough?
Alexander the Great changed the world single-handedly, however, in the end there was a final enemy he could not vanquish. He conquered the whole world, but could not conquer himself. Welcome to the story of a lost servant of God in 2 Kings 5.15-27.
Naaman’s struggle to be great ends in the great words of the prophet. Later as the greater prophet who speaks greater words, Jesus tells this story of Naaman to heal us of spiritual leprosy, free us from self-importance, give us the greatness we are looking for.
I had a conversation recently. The person confided, “I want to connect with God. I’ve cried out to God, pleading for him to show himself to me. But there’s nothing. Where is God?” How do we connect with God? Do we connect with God through the Church and its traditions, special anointed individuals, biblical principles, timeless truths, or directly with our hearts?
