THE BLOG
If there's one thing that this "deep dive" has given me, it's an entirely new understanding of the Father in Jesus' story. Where I once thought Jesus was simply telling of how an entitled son made a r...
Sometimes when Tom preaches, he makes a funny statement to get his point across. He says that we often put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble. That's what we do with the story Jesus told his crowd in ...
There's something Jesus' audience knew about this story that we might miss. The father's son was asking for privilege without responsibility.
Here's how Bailey explains this,
"The direct natural r...
Once we understand the culture of Jesus' day, we have a greater awareness of the impact His story of the prodigal son had on His audience.
The original audience for this parable
Don't forget who Jes...
Kenneth Bailey wrote a great book on Luke 15. It's called The Cross & the Prodigal, Luke 15 Through the Eyes of Middle Eastern Peasants. In this book, Bailey "highlights the tensions between law and ...
How the world defines love:
If you were to ask someone how they define love, they might say, "to be accepted completely, no matter what."
Or, they might say, "to be believed in, supported and trust...
To retreat is to pull back, or get away from something that is difficult, dangerous or disagreeable.
To retreat is to also get away from the ordinary to spend extended time with God so you can experi...
I googled, "Do people take responsibility for the choices they make?"
I'll tell you why I asked that question in a minute.
This is what came up at the top of the page:
We are ultimately responsibl...
I rarely ever, in fact, have never done this before but I'm doing it this week because this message is so important for us to embrace. In preparing for my podcast this week I came across a powerful me...
When I wrote Spiritual Warfare for Women, I said a lot of things I knew were true, but hadn't yet experienced the full weight of their truth. Like this, the first sentence in the Introduction:
"I a...
One of mine and Tom’s favorite lines in a movie is the one Roy Miller (played by Tom Cruise) relayed to June Havens (played by Cameron Diaz) in Knight and Day.
Many times Tom a...
The Psalmist wrote this,
You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
...
