Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? This is a loaded question, but where does it come from?  In Matthew 3:11, John the Baptist announces that Jesus is going to baptize people into the Holy Spirit. He’s saying that Jesus is so powerful, He is actually able to take sinful, broken humans and immerse them into the Godhead.  It’s a radical statement.  Jesus’ mission is to find a way to forever unify humanity and Divinity. … Read More

The Problem In Edgar Allen Poe’s famous short story The Tale Tell Heart, the narrator confesses to murder because he imagines the dead man’s heart beating incessantly beneath the floorboards.  This is, of course, not a real sound, but rather the drumbeat of his guilty conscience. While certainly a macabre story, Poe touched on something profound:  the universal human tendency towards shame and subsequent self-destruction. The story has power because we too know the longing to … Read More

As Mother’s Day approaches, I’m reminded that we still have a lot of confusion about God’s plan for men and women.  The church needs powerful women fulfilling their destiny, unhindered by misconceptions and legalistic constraints. Here are 3 things we should all understand in order to partner with what God is doing in this area: 1) God created men and women as equal partners. In Genesis 2:18, God creates woman as a “helper, meet for … Read More

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire” the old cliché goes.  Like an inexperienced driver on an icy road, the saying describes humanity’s tendency to overcompensate. In our effort to avoid one ditch, we often end up right smack in the middle of another. One of the things I’ve noticed as a minister that emphasizes the grace of God is that sometimes people come out of legalism (the idea that we need to earn … Read More