Tag Archives: bible

The Double Portion: What Shame Is Really Pointing You Toward | Daily Bread

This morning someone very close to me said something that stopped me mid-morning and opened a conversation about one of the most misunderstood experiences in both human psychology and the Christian faith: shame. I considered what shame actually is, what it’s actually for, and why God never intended for us to make it our home.

If you are dealing with shame over your past behavior or choices, make no mistake. Shame is not meant to be wallowed in. It is meant to point us toward conviction and guide us forward into righteousness. It is a signal, not a sentence. A starting line, not a finish line.

God wants to restore you, just as He promises to do for Israel. The question is not whether He is willing. The question is whether you will allow Him to work in your life, or whether you will let shame block the blessing He is already holding out to you.

The Image of the Cross: Curse or Blessing, and What Are You Living? | Daily Bread

Someone told me recently that wearing a cross is a sin. “It’s a graven image, a violation of God’s law.” But a careful study of Scripture tells a very different story.

The second commandment was never a prohibition against every image or symbol. It was a command against worshiping created things as gods. God himself commanded images to be made, each one pointing toward His glory, His presence, and His provision… and ultimately toward the cross.

Christ broke every curse the law carried through His sacrifice, fulfilling what none of us ever could. The cross around the neck of a humble, spirit-filled believer is not an idol. It is a symbol of redemption, freedom, and the good news of salvation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and we are commanded to carry that truth into the world.

Speaking Truth Is Not the Same as Judging | Daily Bread

To say “don’t judge” sounds humble. It sounds gracious. But underneath it is a confusion that quietly does harm to the very people it wants to protect. Speaking truth is not, in and of itself, judgment. And the kindest thing anyone can do for someone caught in sin is not to make them comfortable in it — it is to point them toward the One who can wash it clean.

Sunday Sessions | One Gospel, Two Roads (Or, The Argument I Once Used Against My Own Faith)

Many years ago, I tried to use this exact argument to prove my father’s faith was built on sand. I was wrong. Thirty years later someone posted it online and asked anyone to disprove it with scripture. I hope this answers their invitation well, and helps whoever reads it.

When Your Faith Shakes | Daily Bread

This is not a polished testimony with a tidy ending. This is what it actually looks like when the shaking is happening — in real time, in a real life, with a real God who is not confused even when I am. I had thought my faith was at the strongest it had ever been. And then the month I’m about to describe happened. This is what I found when I got quiet enough.

Patterns, Cycles, and Ancient Warnings: Exploring the Work of Jonathan Cahn

There was a sycamore tree at the corner of Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001, it was struck by debris from the falling towers and destroyed. The stump was kept. You can look it up, see the photographs, and visit the location. It happened whether anyone was looking for it or not. That is one of nine documented harbingers Jonathan Cahn traces between a single verse from the eighth century BC and the events of that morning. This post is my full engagement with his work — because the material deserves more than a summary.

Why I Believe We Are Living in the End Times — and Why I’m Unbothered by Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Marbles

I’m aware of how this title lands. I’ve seen the eye-rolls, and honestly, I get it — the end times space has more than its share of sensationalism, date-setting, and people who seem to be enjoying the chaos a little too much. I’m not that. What I am is someone who has spent a lot of time looking carefully at Scripture, at history, and at current events — and who finds the convergence of all three genuinely difficult to dismiss. This is not a panic post. It’s a reference post. Take what’s useful, push back on what you disagree with, and at minimum, consider the possibility that the patterns are worth a serious look.

Science & Spirituality | Dinosaurs are Fake… DId You Know?

The Bible never uses the word “dinosaur” — and there’s a very good reason for that. It might not be what you think. Welcome to Did You Know? — a new series pulling back the curtain on the things that look like contradictions but are actually just gaps in translation, time, and context.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | Passing the Scroll

These aren’t questions that destabilize Scripture. What they destabilize is a shallow relationship with Scripture. A faith that can’t survive honest examination probably needed, and still needs, to be examined.

Sunday Sessions | Grace

Dr. Frank Turek asked on X yesterday, “how would you describe grace to someone?” I couldn’t help but write I a long-winded reply to that post, because I learned loved grace the hard way, and I feel so humbled when I am reminded of the cost of it. Today’s Sunday Session is how I would describe grace.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | Where I Stand

This is the part of this series where I stop circling the evidence and tell you plainly where all of this has landed for me. Not a conclusion to the questions, per se, but the position I’ve taken inside of them.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | Where the Thread Held

The Dead Sea Scrolls put real pressure on things I thought I understood — canon, transmission, messianic expectation. But pressure is not the same as rupture. A thread under tension is still a thread. This is where it held.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | What the Scrolls Complicate

The Dead Sea Scrolls don’t undermine the faith. They complicate the comfortable version of it — and that’s not the same thing. Canon fluidity, textual variants, messianic plurality: none of these are hidden, none are invented, and none of them get to stay safely unexamined. Part 3 of What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | My Father’s Questions

Part 2 of What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word traces the questions my father couldn’t put down — about canon, suppression, and the distance between institutional Christianity and the faith Scripture actually describes. It also traces what those questions cost him, what they planted in me without my knowing, and what it took for me to finally understand the inheritance he left behind. This one got personal. I think it needed to.

What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word | The Discovery

In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd threw a rock into a cave near the Dead Sea and heard something break. What was inside those clay jars would become the most significant manuscript discovery in modern history — and would take decades of scholarly struggle, controversy, and one very persistent librarian to finally reach the rest of the world. This is Part One of What the Desert Kept: The Unbound Word, a five-part deep dive into the Dead Sea Scrolls — their discovery, their contents, the community that preserved them, and the Scriptural threads that held across nearly two thousand years of silence.

When Leaves Aren’t Enough: The Real Work of Spiritual Formation | Daily Bread

Spiritual appearance comes naturally. Showing up, saying the right things, checking the right boxes — from a distance, it all looks like faith. But Jesus wasn’t fooled by a leafy tree with nothing underneath, and He isn’t fooled by us either. In this promised deep dive from the Leaves but No Fruit post, we get honest about the gap between looking formed and actually being formed — what creates it, why it’s so easy to miss, and what real transformation actually looks like from the inside out. Spoiler: it’s slower, harder, and more honest than most of us expect.