Lot’s wife belonged to a family with a great name and trust in God’s promises. She even had angels visit her home! God sent them to personally escort her from His coming wrath to His safety (Gen.19:1-22). Yet, she fell into eternal judgment because she looked back to her life in Sodom. She longed to preserve what she had and became a pillar of salt–a crystalline substance used for preservation (Gen. 19:26). Friends, Jesus is kind to warns us in Luke 17:32-33: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”
Cornelius’ conversion account can teach us many things about the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles in the first century church. We see in this story that God’s salvation through Christ is for all the families of the earth. God shows no partiality but comes to redeem people from all nations. All this is true. But my focus today is on that small line in verse four. It makes me wonder: what if my service and prayers to God were like a memorial offering rising up as a pleasing aroma before His throne?
Loving your neighbor as yourself is a hard practice. We talk of the polarization of the broader American church—congregations across the country that are divided by faith, creed, color, and politics. Yet many of us are disconnected from people who are not across the country but across the pew. The command to love and serve—not merely tolerate—each other requires more commitment and sacrifice than we care to give, and so we do the polite minimum from afar.
Continue at Christianity Today.
I’m thankful to contribute to The Cross, a Christianity Today’s Easter 2020 devotional guide that’s designed to help individuals, families, and small groups see how the work of Christ, accomplished at the cross, is still carried forward by Christians in their daily lives. This series of 10 articles not only focuses on how Jesus' death and resurrection impact our faith theologically, but also our thoughts, actions, and relationships on a daily basis. Learn more.
It was a Tuesday like most others: playground time with my young daughters. Who would have guessed that, amidst the gigging screams of my girls, I would find myself defending the deity of Christ in conversation with another mom who was a Black Hebrew Israelite? A deep theological debate—covering the Trinity, substitutionary atonement, and Pan-Africanism—hadn’t been on my radar as we headed to the playground. And yet, there I was, chatting with a relatively young mother of two in her attempt to proselytize.
Grateful for the chance to write for Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog. Paragraphs from the piece are below and the full article is found here. Thank you for reading!
My practice of faith, like most things in my life, is sustained by a propensity for difficult work. I’m a hard driver, often choosing the coarse road. As a mother, I give birth without epidural, nurse for fourteen-months, make my own baby food, homeschool my little ones—all the while working part-time and teaching small groups. It’s admirable—if not for the pesky tendency to pride myself by the praise of these efforts.
