The first of the Ten Commandments states, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Idolatry isn’t just wrong, it’s irrational. Jeremiah mocked those who chopped down a tree, shaped the wood with a chisel, adorned it with silver and gold, secured it with nails so it wouldn’t topple over, then bowed and […]
I’ll never forget the first time I told Candy that I loved her. I was 20 years old and she was 19. We were sitting side by side in my rust-colored, rust-covered Plymouth in the parking lot of a fine dining establishment called Donut Land. Mustering up my courage, I looked her in the eyes […]
Seeing that our study is taking us into the prison epistles, letters that Paul wrote while being imprisoned for his work as an evangelist and missionary, it pushed my mind to an experience I had the first time I engaged in a prison ministry. Many years ago, one of the elders in my church who […]
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are known as “the prison epistles” because they were written from prison (either Caesarea or Rome, Acts 24-26 or 28). Ephesians is known as “the queen of the prison epistles.” It was written by Paul as a circular letter, meant to be read and distributed among churches in the Asia […]
The longer I live, the more I understand Job’s lament that “man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). Sadness flares up regularly, and I encounter a lot of it in my daily work. After more than 40 years in the ministry, I am accustomed to walking through seasons of […]
