My mother-in-law was a classy little-old-lady. When I met her, she was almost sixty. With her lovely silver hair, she was the perfect mix of frumpy and spunky. She was a theologian and my favorite seminary professor. An avid reader and student of the Word, she challenged me to read E.M. Bounds, Arthur Pink, A.W. Tozer, Charles Spurgeon and others. A few of her books are treasures in my library today, each with her memorable scrawls in the margins. She had a knack for sharing

Mark’s Gospel is filled with stories of miraculous healing. Jesus seems to move quickly from city to city, and from broken person to broken person, compassionately healing and restoring! Broken people are Jesus’ specialty. I know from experience. Messed-up people become the Messiah’s masterpieces. Beauty from ashes. As I move through Mark’s narratives, I often find myself asking, “What happened next? What’s the rest of the story?” That’s what happened when I opened to Mark 1:

This isn’t Dr. Dolittle... this is the Old Testament story that took place during Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. It happened like this... During those eventful forty years, God’s people faced several enemies. Among them, the Moabites (Numbers 22-24). Balak, the king of Moab was an evil pagan, but he wasn’t dumb. He could see that Israel was strong. He had heard the reports of Israel’s victories over their enemies, and he heard the unfathomable accounts of the Israeli

Do you suppose that God could be trying to get our attention? Obviously, God is allowing the Corona Virus pandemic. Is this divine discipline? There are plenty of Biblical examples proving that God allows bad things to happen in order that His people might return to their God. That’s exactly what happened when... “The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord handed them over to Midian seven years” (Judges 6:1, CSB). God got their attention! Actually,

What could be worse than Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue”? Well, Jacob’s name meant something akin to “cheater.” Can you imagine the conversation at the water cooler? “Hello. Yes sir, Abraham’s my grandpa and Isaac’s my dad. Esau’s my twin brother, though we’re nothing alike. My name is ... cheater!” You know the story. Jacob cheated Esau out of the birthright and the blessing, and then to save his hide, he ran off to live with Uncle Laban (Genesis 25-28). There he met and marri

In 586 BC the Babylonians overthrew Jerusalem and Judea, taking many Israelites into captivity. Among the captives were three Hebrew boys named “Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah” (Daniel 1:6, CSB). To humiliate and humble them, their captors gave them new Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 1:7). The Babylonian King, “Nebuchadnezzar made a gold statue, ninety feet high and nine feet wide. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon” (Danie

The Angel of the Lord first appears on the pages of Holy Scripture in the sixteenth chapter of Genesis. Many theologians believe that Angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Jesus! If they’re right, then the Second Person of the Trinity left His Glorious Throne in heaven and took on human form, appearing in the Old Testament at special times for special purposes. The Angel of the Lord must have been Jesus. Let me point out three pieces of evidence found in this narrative. Firs

Jesus makes many appearances is the Old Testament. Few are as memorable as His cameo at Gilgal. The first mention of Joshua, Moses’ faithful and fearless lieutenant, comes in Exodus seventeen, immediately after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. Food and water were scarce commodities in the dessert wilderness, but God provided bread that rained from heaven (Exodus 16) and God provided water that gushed forth from a giant rock (Exodus 17:1-7). Unlike those rare and precio

Moses was eighty years old when he had the life-altering encounter at the burning bush. “Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed... God called out to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,”

If you are a born-again Christian, then God is your Father. Take a moment to absorb the truth of that statement... You are the King’s kid! “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow