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2 John 1:7, there’s a dangerous lie that has deceived millions, a lie so subtle, that even believers don’t always recognize it and that lie is this, if it sounds good, if it feels good, it must be from God. Some of the most destructive deceptions don’t come from obvious enemies of the faith, but...

2 John 1:1-2, truth lives in us, it is eternal, a place of truth and truth itself is terrifying to those who believe they can hide from it. Here’s a realization, every choice is eternal the moment you make it and this is why regret is so powerful, because regret is the soul remembering that...

2 John 1:1-3, walk in truth, don’t follow every new idea, because deception isn’t always obvious, it doesn’t come with a warning label, instead it looks good, it sounds good, it even feels right, but beneath the surface, it is leading people away from God. We live in a time where truth is no...

This is a prayer, but forgiveness is clearly a matter of high significance to Jesus for how you imagine yourself participating in what he’s doing and being one of his followers. Forgiveness, it’s a very personal reality, the experience of being wronged by somebody and then having to sort out my...

Our daily provision of bread, the bread that we need for every day, give it to us today, but we’re not asking for a month’s supply, we’re not asking to be set up for life, it’s not a prayer for the whole of one’s life, it’s a prayer for the moment. There’s something about this prayer Jesus wants...

Jesus lives in a story where God’s name is at stake, he believes God’s name is holy, but God’s name is not being treated as or recognized as holy, otherwise you wouldn’t need to pray for its holy reputation to be restored. There’s this whole biblical theme of Yahweh’s name, the Elohim above all...

Formative, shaping experience of prayer is not in competition with other forms of prayer, it’s in addition, prayer is a many facet jewel in possession of the community of Jesus and it can do many things. Formative prayer that’s meant to shape us through repetition over a long period of time...

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he shares a few words of warning, that also serve as a kind of reminder that the God they worship, is not like the pagan gods. In context, the introduction to it is, when you go to the pagan temples down the street, what you’ll notice is the priests, when...

Matthew 6:5-6, don’t be like the hypocrites, they pray like this, they make sure that they are seen and visible in public, when they do their prayers. There’s a cultural gap and context thing going on here, so Judaism, Hebrew scriptures developed a tradition of fixed hour prayer, so if you live...

Who’s the audience, is this a way of doing right by God or doing right by other people or maybe those two are tied together and the way you treat people in need is the way you do right by God. It’s the roots of that concept, Proverbs 14:31, an expression of this mindset, the one who oppresses...

Religious practices are meant to align ourselves with the heart of God and in doing so, make all of our relationships better, but Jesus saw that religious practices of his day were sometimes doing the opposite, that people were doing religion in order to promote themselves to seek honor and...

Matthew 5:43-48, the first phrase comes from Leviticus 19:17-18, you should love your neighbor as yourself, but this second phrase, you shall hate your enemy raises an interesting ambiguity in the original verse that Jesus is quoting from Leviticus 19:17-18. If somebody wrongs you, go tell them...

A lost history of humanity, hidden in plain sight, because for centuries we’ve been told to read the first two chapters of Genesis as a single seamless story, but what if they aren’t, what if they are two separate accounts describing two different events? Genesis 1:27, so God created man in his...

If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer them the other, one thing we know is that slapping is more about insulting someone’s honor or dignity, than it is about actually trying to take them out. Nothing has changed, slapping throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, it’s always about...

Matthew 5:38-42, the law of retaliation, this was actually an ancient law already to Jesus, not just because it was in the Torah, but because it was ancient even in the time of Moses. So most likely, even though the literal reading of the law is you poke out my eye, so I get to poke out your...

Coercion, responding to people and how I relate to people when our wills are cross purposes or we have different visions of reality in some way. What happens when we’re in conflict, how am I going to treat you or you hurt me, how am I going to treat you or you and I hate each other, how I’m...

Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus is addressing a pretty specific issue in Israelite culture, Israelite oath swearing. A vow in the Bible in ancient Israel, this is when people make promises to God, God, if you do this for me, then here’s what I’ll do for you. Vows are between people and God and then...

Matthew 5:31-32, these words of Jesus about marriage and divorce and remarriage, they have had a huge huge influence on the course of millions of people’s lives over the last 2,000 years and there is a diversity of views on the implications of what Jesus is saying, there’s a diversity of views...

What’s the greater good, that’s actually more appealing then the mental fantasy underneath this extreme response that Jesus says, which is to deal with it, but just dealing with it, cultivating lust, you have to have some greater vision that is even more fulfilling than the thing that I’m after...

Jesus’ claim that the long story of God’s covenant with Israel is coming to fulfillment, that God’s Heavenly Kingdom that’s touched down here on earth through him and these communities that he’s beginning, that this is what he calls the fulfillment of the Torah and prophets and he calls his...