Posts with the tag “end-times”

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