Illustration: Sin

In the devotional book My Heart -- Christ's Home Through the Year, Rick Ezell wrote this: "In his book Fuzzy Memories, Jack Handey writes: 'There used to be this bully who would demand my lunch money every day. Since I was smaller, I would give it to him. But then I decided to fight back. I started taking karate lessons. But then the karate lesson guy said I had to start paying him five dollars a lesson. So I just went back to paying the bully.'"

Proclaiming Grace

In a brief article at the Covenant Seminary website, Bryan Chapell says: "In our day, two opposing forces challenge the effective proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The first well-documented foe of the gospel is the erosion of authority. The philosophies of subjectivism have joined hands with the skeptics of transcendent truth to create a cultural climate antagonistic toward any authority..."

Illustration: Faith, Hope

In a sermon on the Sunday after 9/11, M. Craig Barnes said, "The French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur has written about the creative possibility of limit experiences. A limit experience is an experience that is beyond the limits of normal life. It's the one you spent most of life avoiding, dreading, defending yourself against, such as death and separation. Beyond the limits of those things, we think there's nothing but emptiness, loss and anomie; but as Dr. Ricouer reminds us, there is more. There is also God whose creative love knows no limits."

Trust God’s Heart

In a sermon right after 9/11, R. Albert Mohler wrestled with the problem of evil as reflected in those tragic events: "How could a good God allow this to happen? How can a God of love allow killers to kill, terrorists to terrorize and the wicked to escape without a trace?"