God

Most theological and moral failures can be traced back to a wrong view of God. We charge God with being unfair only if we think he must submit to our concept of fairness. We will contentedly live one way in public and another in private only if we believe him to be local and limited like us. We can...
One of the things we most want in life is to be loved. We want our parents and siblings to love us. We want our friends and extended family members to love us. We want our coaches and teachers to love us. If we are married, we want our spouse to love us. If we are parents, we desire our children to...
Think of the one area in your life right now in which it seems that it will take everything you have to make it through. Maybe it’s a class in graduate school or seminary. Perhaps it’s a season of struggle in your marriage and family. You might have a health issue that is debilitating. One of your...
It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday in Southern California while I was settling to watch my four-and-a-half-year-old son play basketball when I received a call from a sister in the Lord, Anne, dying in Minnesota. [1] We never met, but similar difficult providences had connected us for counsel and we became...
“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” – Romans 11:1 The fear of rejection is perhaps one of the more influential considerations in our decision making. The choices we make, the conversations we choose to have or avoid, the way we spend our money; many times, these decisions are...
The United States Secret Service is the federal law enforcement agency primarily responsible for protecting high-profile government figures and for conducting investigations into criminal activity targeting the country’s financial infrastructure. In the 2021 fiscal year, the Service spent around $2...
In the midst of suffering, I often pray, “Lord, help me to suffer well.” What I mean is that I want to suffer in a way that glorifies God. But what does it look like for the believer to suffer well? In the first part of his letter James speaks about what it means to be faithful in suffering through...
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11 For regular readers of PlaceForTruth, you may have given a good little chuckle when you read the title of the article and then the prooftext that we’ll be...
Remodeling a home (or church) is hard work. Not only does it take a great deal of planning, hard work, blood (if you happen to be accident prone), sweat, and even tears. There are often unforeseen trials that accompany the work, like leaky pipes, rotted wood, and poorly run wires that all need to...
How do you envision a triune God carrying out the divine missions? Do you picture the Son and Spirit departing the throne room—lunchboxes in hand—only to return to Heaven in the evening and report to the Father? If so, how might we understand our communion with God or the presence of Jesus in the...