If there was something called "soulful excellence," what would it look like? Seems like Paul is trying to describe just that in his very first letter to a church. Here's what he said: Faith is work. No apologies. And unique works flow from faith. This work -- he calls it labor -- is a labor of love. Not guilt. Not obligation. Put more love in our labor. As for hope in Jesus, it better be durable. Hope has to be stretched by time to see its brightest colors. Words matter for Paul if they flow from conviction. Power is released only when word meets flesh. In spite of persecution, he...

  Jesus wasn't meek and mild.  You don't publicly execute meek and mild people.  You crucify people who confront the system. Life with Jesus then and now is 50 percent comfort and 50 percent confrontation.  If Jesus' words and example aren't confronting you about how you live and what you treasure, then maybe you haven't met the Jesus of the Bible. Two-thousand years ago Jesus rode a donkey into the big city to let everyone know peace had come to town.  Not a cheap peace or a false harmony like the ones we sometimes prefer. Not a "just let sleeping dogs lie" kind of peace, but a...

  Jesus remarked he had, “…nowhere to lay his head.” There’s a haunting sadness in that phrase. He said it after being turned away by two villages. He said it to warn his friends that following him would lead to nowhere for them. Recently we’ve seen images of small children sleeping on cold cement floors without blankets or pillows. Some say they deserve “nowhere to lay their head” because they’re “immigrant detainees.” Jesus’ life and teachings offer a window into the mind of God and a critique of the world we’ve created. Therefore, the gospel is always political but never partisan....

  Where are you in relationship to Jesus? If you drew a diagram, where would you be? Beside him? Behind him? There was a soldier who placed himself under Jesus’ authority. Though not a follower of Jesus, he understood power and authority; superior and subordinate. Being a soldier, he trusted the chain of command. He knew that when the superior officer issued the order, all that was necessary to achieve the objective was the compliance of the subordinate! Jesus was “amazed” at his faith. Would he be amazed by ours? Do we live under the authority of Jesus’ words and example? LUKE 7:1-10...

  Boasting in God isn’t pounding a drum on the issues of the day. It’s not parroting religious talking points. Boasting in God comes naturally as a climax to working God’s program and finding God to be a creative genius. That’s what Paul means when he says, “...suffering produces endurance; endurance produces character; character produces hope and hope doesn’t disappoint...” He’s bragging how, through the gift of faith, he’s received the gift of grace. Grace in the form of access to the reality that Jesus embodied, that God is in all things and using all things for God’s righteous...