Posts with the tag “end-times”

Matt King is drowning and he knows it. His cousin looks at the whole pile of it and calls it what it is: a tough deal. Matt's answer is quiet and honest. "I'm just trying to keep my head above water." Most people know that feeling. But here is what nobody says in those seasons: when you are barely keeping your head above water, you are still making choices. And some of those choices have consequences that reach much further than tomorrow. Moses said it plainly: choose life, so that you and your descendants may live. He was not talking only to the people in front of him. He was talking about every child and grandchild they had not yet had. You are not just surviving this season for yourself. Read the full post.  Read More

Steven Spielberg made a movie about first contact with intelligent life beyond Earth. But the Bible got there first. And the universe it describes makes the one in Close Encounters look considerably smaller. Job records the sons of God singing at creation. Nehemiah describes the heavenly host bowing before God. Revelation presents angelic beings of staggering variety around the throne. The cosmos has never been empty. It has always been populated, active, and alive. And in the middle of all of that, the Psalmist looks up at the night sky and asks: what is man that You are mindful of him? The bigger the universe gets, the more stunning the answer becomes. Read the full post.  Read More

In Coco, the rule is devastating. When the last living person forgets you, you suffer the Final Death. You simply cease to exist. It is a beautiful movie. But it cannot answer the one question that matters most: what happens when everyone who loved you is also gone? What happens when there is no one left to remember? Isaiah saw the answer. God sends the dew of the dawn onto those sleeping in the dust, and the earth gives them back. Not because someone kept a photograph on a shelf. Because God remembered where He put them. The people you love who belong to Jesus are not waiting to be forgotten. They are waiting to be raised. Read the full post.  Read More

Iceman pulls Maverick aside and says it plainly: "The Navy needs Maverick. The Kid needs Maverick. That's why I fought for you." Not around you. Not about you. For you. Someone in the room where decisions were being made chose to use their access on your behalf. Zechariah saw a vision of a high priest standing before God with the accuser at his right hand pressing charges. And then the One with all authority said: remove the filthy garments. Put on festal robes. That vision did not end in the Old Testament. Hebrews says Jesus always lives to make intercession. Present tense. Right now. Someone is still in the room. Someone is still fighting for you. Read the full post.  Read More

Sonny Kapoor runs a crumbling hotel with a leaking roof and broken plumbing, and greets every disaster with the same line delivered with complete sincerity and absolutely no supporting evidence: "Everything will be alright in the end. So if it is not alright, it is not the end." The guests find it infuriating and irresistible. Because they want it to be true. Here is what Sonny did not know. He was not being optimistic. He was being theological. The Bible has been making his argument for thousands of years, backed by something far more solid than a hopeful hotel manager in Jaipur. Time is not a wheel going nowhere. It is a story going somewhere magnificent. And God already declared what the ending looks like. Read the full post.  Read More

George Banks did not see it coming. That is the whole joke of Father of the Bride. The world moved and he was still standing in the same spot. Later he says it quietly: "That is the thing about life, is the surprises, the little things that sneak up on you and grab hold of you." Every father nodded. Because every father knows exactly what he is describing. But here is what George Banks did not know. The very last words of the Old Testament are about a father. And God placed the restoration of the father and child relationship at the hinge point of history, right before the great Day of the LORD. Faithful fatherhood is not just a private family matter. It is a prophetic act. Read the full post.  Read More

A foreman walks up to Carl Fredricksen's house, surrounded by construction equipment and developers who want him gone, and asks plainly: when are you going to give this place up? Carl does not flinch. He says: "When I'm dead." The audience laughs. Then they cry. Because every one of us has something we are holding onto with everything we have. Something the world keeps pressuring us to release. But here is what Peter told people who had already lost most of what they had built: you have an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Reserved in heaven. Beyond the reach of any bulldozer. The question is not whether you will hold on. The question is what you are holding. Read the full post.  Read More

Nobody in the middle of a contraction quits having the baby. The contraction does not mean the birth is not coming. It means the birth is getting closer. The intensity is not evidence that something is going wrong. It is evidence that something is about to arrive. Most of us are carrying something this week that feels too heavy for where we are in the story. That is not the end. That is the contraction. Stay in the room.  Read More

Every graduation season somebody reads the Dr. Seuss book. The one with the winding road. And the words land the way they always do: "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Beautiful. True. And not enough. Because Jesus did not say follow your dreams. He said follow Me. And the generation standing in cap and gown right now is about to discover that the direction they choose matters more than any commencement speech told them. Read the full post.  Read More

Noah warned for one hundred and twenty years. And the thing that should stop us cold is not the flood. It is the patience. One hundred and twenty years of an open door held open longer than anyone had a right to expect. God's patience is still being mistaken for God's indifference. The warning has been sitting in the background long enough to start sounding like background noise. But the warning is the mercy. And every day the door is still open is another day someone can walk through it.  Read More

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore. The chair that was always his, always hers. The empty place that represents a meal that is not finished yet. Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it. Because on the night before He was crucified, Jesus did not just start a memorial. He made a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. Read the full post.  Read More

Most of us have spent our whole Christian lives with a vague picture of what we are actually waiting for. Heaven. Something nice. Something far from here. But the prophets were not vague. They described a capital city, a real table, nations stopping their wars, the blind seeing as a matter of course. Not escape from this world but the best possible version of it under the best possible King. The question Monday is asking: are you building your life on something that survives the trumpet?  Read More

There is a moment in every swimming lesson that nobody talks about honestly. The moment the instructor says let go of the wall. Everything in that child says no. The wall is solid. The water is unpredictable. Baptism is that moment. And it is one of the most prophetically loaded things a believer can do in a world that is desperately afraid of what comes next. Because when you went under that water, you were not just getting wet. You were practicing dying. And when you came back up, you were declaring something that death itself cannot argue with. Read the full post.  Read More

Long before Revelation, the Hebrew prophets were already using the image of a woman in labor to describe the deepest kind of hope. Not the easy kind. The kind that costs something. Mary stepped into that tradition when she said yes to God before she could see how the story would unfold. No plan. No approval from her community. Just a word from God and the decision of what to do with it. She said yes. She stayed through the cross. She was in the upper room when the Spirit fell. That is what your mother has been doing for you. This one is for her. Read the full post.  Read More

I live with five women. My wife and four daughters. And the word in our house lately is delulu. Short for delusional. It means you are holding onto something the rest of the room has already decided is not going to happen. Here is what I did not expect. The longer I sat with that word, the more I realized it is exactly what the world says about the Church. About every believer who still genuinely expects Jesus to come back. Peter warned us this was coming. Mockers would say: where is the promise? Nothing ever changes. Everything just keeps going the way it always has. But the people calling us delulu forgot about the empty tomb. And that changes everything. Read the full post.  Read More

The prophet Ezekiel saw a river flowing out from the Temple in Jerusalem. A trickle at first. Then ankle deep. Then deep enough to swim in. And everywhere it went, things came back to life. Even the Dead Sea turned fresh. Jesus stood at the Temple during the water ceremony and said: that river is Me. And everyone who believes in Me becomes part of it. The question is not whether resurrection power lives inside you. If you belong to Jesus, it does. The question is whether it is moving. Because the river was never designed to stay at the source. Read the full post.  Read More