Part 2 of Making Ashes for Ash Wednesday (Video)

Why We Need Lent - March 2020 Newsletter Article

No one expected it. There was no one, to my knowledge, who believed God would become human and identify with us in our misery. That, however, is the message of Lent. God entered our world to stand with us not against us. Lent is forty days because Jesus was forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. This trial is a picture of his whole mission, shouldering the human condition, standing with us, not apart from us. At that time there was a community, where the Dead Sea scrolls were later found, that separated itself from the rest of the world. It saw the world as "us and them". The religious leaders who lived among the people still stood apart from the people and also thought in terms of "us and them". Jesus came and turned everything upside down. He said he came to set the world on fire. He was going to burn down all that set itself against God's true purpose. God is love, one of his disciples would later write. Another would say, Love bears a...

Religion is a Matter of the Heart

They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts (Romans 2:15 NIV). To be human is to be immersed in life (in existence, in the reality around us). There is no God’s eye view from which we can stand and with pure objectivity observe reality. To be sure, we have gained much by our attempts to stand back and analyze reality. We’ve been doing this in various ways since the beginning of human existence. With the scientific revolution there came tremendous gains from our ability to analyze the natural world but with it also a false sense of our ability to be objective and an exaggeration of the role of detachment in knowing. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in reason. However, knowing involves more than our cognitive faculty. There is what the ancients called the heart, a faculty often ignored by moderns. What is “heart”? For the biblical writers heart refers to the whole person immersed in reality. It refers to the whole self, intellect, emotions and will. Significantly,...

Joy comes in Believing -- September 2019 Newsletter Article

"When we study it in detail … we discover what a book of JOY the New Testament is.” "JOY is the distinguishing atmosphere of the Christian life" (William Barclay in Flesh and Spirit). I remember well my experience of surrendering my life to Christ at the age of 18. Before that, I was ignoring the faith I had as a child. I was focused on having a good time, but though my focus was on a good time I remember a profound emptiness I felt. Here I was, surrounded by a group of friends, doing all kinds of fun things, but inwardly, I was empty. I see this same emptiness in kids today. My experience of surrendering to Christ was one of coming to know an “inexpressible and glorious joy”, as Peter says (1 Peter 1:8 NIV). Giving myself over to faith brought a fullness where once there was emptiness and an undergirding strength to all of my life, as Nehemiah testifies (Nehemiah 8:10). The source of this joy was in believing, precisely as Peter says in 1 Peter 1:8. Giving myse...

David Peterson

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