He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:19) My home computer has really been acting kind of crazy lately. It would reboot itself when I checked my e-mail and at other times it would just inexplicably crash or shut down. I asked a friend about it and he told me that I had so many corrupt files on my hard drive that the operating system was getting confused. He recommended […]

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8) My local newspaper reported this week that the legislature in my state will be increasing sin taxes in order to balance the state budget. I stopped and thought about it and drew an important inference about what sin taxes teach us. In my state, sin taxes are excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, although some states tax other products, too. Interesting, isn’t it? The world teaches us […]

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” (James 1:2) It may have been fourteen years ago, but the summer of 1995 was a memorable time for me. I celebrated my 42nd birthday and only now affectionately refer to that summer as my “Summer of 42”. Everything seemed to be falling apart. I learned that my childhood asthma, which I was told I had outgrown, had returned; I had an annual physical only to learn that I had diabetes; and I lost one of […]

“For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” (Romans 6:14) I sure love living under grace. It doesn’t mean I can sin and move on with life as if nothing happened. It means that God will accept me in spite of sin in my life. Now that’s forgiveness with a capital “F”! We all know that grace is the unmerited favor of God. But John Piper, a Baptist pastor in Minnesota, takes grace one step farther: “Grace is not […]