When the Accuser Speaks and the Truth Answers Many of you have seen Ren Gill’s performance of Hi Ren. It’s hard to forget. A young man in a hospital gown sits in a wheelchair in a bare, decaying room. With nothing but an acoustic guitar and his own voice, he stages an intense conversation between…
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When the Years Feel Heavy and the Father’s Shadow Is Long There is a song that has followed me for a long time—Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years.” It is not a gospel song. Mick Hucknall wrote it as a teenager about a childhood marked by an absent mother and a stern father. Two lines…
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There are two sentences a man can hear from God, and they do not cancel each other. Nathan the prophet looked at a king who had taken a woman and arranged a death, and he said, “The Lord also has put away your sin.” In the same breath he said the sword would not leave…
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Men measure years on the work that leaves their hands A word for the man who has looked at an old object and felt the years leave with it — and for anyone who still has wire on the spool and does not know what to do with the rest. There is a kind of…
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When Faith Costs the Room Faith may empty a table. It does not empty the covenant. A word for the new believer whose group chat went quiet, and for the older saint who still checks the chair that used to be filled. There is a table most people do not put in a testimony. The…
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You saw the dreads. You saw the ink.A lot of people wrote the ending before the man ever opened his mouth. Brian “Head” Welch had the stage, the money, the name, and the addiction. He has said it himself: fame did not fill him. The drugs did not fill him. He still called the inside…
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A picture can make you think of the Cross. Only He can finish the work. Creation is not thin. It is older than your questions and stranger than most sermons. Oaks hold on. Scarlet comes from small lives people once crushed for holy cloth. A hillside takes the weather and does not explain itself. If…
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A church can be a refuge without becoming a room where the truth is not allowed to speak. Neutrality is sometimes wisdom. Sometimes it is just fear with better lighting. A word for the one who keeps the peace by going quiet, and the one who thinks volume is the same thing as courage. There…
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A holy life can point. It cannot pay. Honour the witnesses. Kneel to the Son. A word for anyone who keeps Jesus on a shelf of good names, and uses other holy lives to keep from needing the only Name that saves. There is a generous room in a lot of houses. Photographs on the…
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Christianity is not a flag you hoist so a civilization can survive. It is a Person you kneel to so a sinner can live. A meme has been moving through Facebook this week. Enough of you have sent it that it needs an answer from the church, not another share. I am not going to…
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