General
God’s Moral Immutability
Category: General
Tags: Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, God's Character, Open Theism
Topics: Attributes and Character
Classical theologians from the fourth and fifth centuries on were very concerned with protecting their understanding of the metaphysical attributes of God—like timelessness, immutability, impassibility—by assessing biblical portraits that conflicted with these attributes to be…
How Classical Theology Gets It Wrong
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Classical Theism, Cruciform Theology, Philosophy
Topics: Attributes and Character
Classical theology has conceived of God as altogether necessary, simple, timeless, unchanging and unknowable. This view of God requires us to conclude that biblical images of God do not reflect the way God truly is…
Does God Intervene?
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, Jesus, Miracles, Open Theism
Given the vast influence of angelic and human free will, what influence does God have in determining what comes to pass? While God has an important role to play in anticipating and creatively responding to…
Why We Can’t Know Why
Category: General
Tags: Chaos Theory, Complexity, Open Theism, Problem of Evil
Various fields of science have taught us that the slightest variation in a sufficiently complex process at one point may cause remarkable variations in that process at another point. The flap of a butterfly wing…
Why Does God’s Activity Seem So Arbitrary?
Category: General
Tags: Character of God, Free Will, Jesus, Prayer, Problem of Evil
Why? It’s the question that never goes away. Why is one infant born sickly and deformed when at the same time another is born perfectly healthy? Why does tragedy repeatedly strike one family while another…
When Prayers Go Unanswered
Category: General
Tags: Evil, Frank Viola, Prayer, Problem of Evil, Spiritual Warfare, Suffering
Topics: The Problem of Evil
Recently Frank Viola published a free e-book where 21 Christian leaders responded to the following question: Why is it that God doesn’t often answer the desperate prayers of His people for deliverance, protection, healing, etc.? You can download…
False Gods in the Church
Category: General
Tags: Belief, Religious Idolatry
We often think of an idol as a statue, but an idol can be anything we use to meet the needs that only God can meet. In other words, a false god. There is no…
Religion that Blinds Us to God
Category: General
Tags: Jesus, Relationships, Religion, Religious Idolatry
For a variety of reasons, many Jews at the time of Jesus had come to believe that heaven had been closed since the writing of the last book of the Old Testament. God was distant…
Coming Home
Category: General
Tags: Idolatry, Kingdom Living, Practicing the Presence of God
The only way we can experience the life God has for us is to give up trying to acquire it on our own. We must surrender ourselves completely to God. This is not merely a…
True Life Now
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Life, Practicing the Presence of God, time
Whether we want to admit it or not, experience teaches us that life is a perpetual, relentless process of decay, one that we know inevitably leads toward death. And this fills many of us with…
The Cosmic Scope of Spiritual Warfare
Category: General
Tags: Angels, Demons, Evil, Kingdom Living, Satan, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Yesterday’s post briefly introduced the reality that we live in the midst of spiritual warfare. This is the reality of being a part of creation where Satan prowls like a roaring lion (1 Pet 5:8-9)….
Vacationing in a War Zone
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Satan, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
Suppose a family decided to go on vacation to a nice cabin on a beautiful shore in a distant country. This vacationing family naturally wanted to tune out the problems of the world, indulge themselves,…
Does God Exist Outside of Time?
Category: General
Tags: Jeremy Jernigan, Open Future, Open Theism, Possibility, time
Topics: Free Will and the Future
Our friend Jeremy Jernigan wrote something recently that we wanted to share with you today. Jeremy is the author of Redeeming Pleasure and Teaching Pastor at Central Christian Church in Arizona. He blogs regularly at…
Introducing “TribeNet”
Category: General
Tags: Connecting, Kingdom of God, TribeNet
Hello Kingdom people, For years I’ve heard on a regular basis from individuals and small groups/house churches who wanted to know if there are others in their area that share their vision of a Jesus-looking…
How the Cross Erases Your Sin
Category: General
Tags: Jesus, Redemption, Satan, Sin
In Colossians 2:14, we read how God canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us. That word “canceled,” means to wipe out, to erase, or to abolish. By means…
God’s Love and Your Freedom
Category: General
Tags: Free Will, God is Love, Love, Open Theism
The most distinctive aspect of the revelation of God in Christ is Jesus’ demonstration that God relies on love to defeat his enemies and to accomplish his purposes. More than anything else, it was the…
How Much Are You Worth?
Category: General
Tags: Cross, God is Love, Trinity
We know what something is worth to someone by what they are willing to pay for it. Consider, then, what our heavenly bridegroom was willing to pay to redeem us and make us his bride….
A Brief Theology of God’s Love
Category: General
Tags: God is Love, Love, Trinity
The most profound truth of the Bible is that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). This is the most fundamental thing to be said about God, for it encompasses everything else that can be…
Love That Keeps On Giving
Category: General
Tags: Love, Self-Sacrificial Love, Unsurpassable Worth
In English, we have one word for love. In ancient Greek, there were four different words that we can translate as “love.” And each has a different meaning. Let’s consider each briefly. Storge—referred to a…
Overcoming the Flesh
Category: General
Tags: Experiencing God, Fruit of the Spirit, Imaginative Prayer, The Holy Spirit, Transformation
In Monday’s post, we talked about the nature of the flesh. Here let’s introduce the work of the Spirit in overcoming the flesh. The Holy Spirit’s goal in pointing us to Christ is to replace…