Faith Like Abram: A Chicago Update

Abram’s family must have thought he was crazy. He left his family and the security of his ancestral home to go to a land that he did not know. More than that, he left to go to an unspecified place. He didn’t leave to go to a place he had heard of but never visited. He went to a completely unknown land. All he knew was that he needed to go.

I feel a bit like Abram. My wife and I will be moving to Chicagoland in September. We’re not moving because of a job. We don’t have those lined up yet. We’re not moving because we know someone. Neither of us have family in the area we’re moving to. We don’t even have a place to stay when we move there. What we do know is that God has called us and so we’re going. Against conventional wisdom, without friends and family, because we want to be obedient to God.

The Choice at the Tree

We make choices every day. We choose when to get up, what to wear and eat. When we choose, we use our judgement on what is the best choice. We do most or all of this without really thinking about it. Sometimes we come to an important decision and then we agonize over the right thing to do. But for most of us, our daily life is full of choices that we don't even think about.

For my second installment in this series, The Trees in Eden, I want to talk about the second tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Like the tree of life, we see echos of this tree throughout scripture. Where echos of the tree of life pointed us to temples, echos of this tree point us to crucial decisions. What I find fascinating about the echos of this tree is that every decision is really the same decision that Adam and Eve had in the garden.

When Doubt Grips You

Are you struggling to have faith today? Maybe you are reading this and in the back of your head you have doubts. Maybe you feel God calling you to something, but you are scared because you don't know the details. Maybe you are faced with crippling anxiety and doubt even though God just provided for you.

Usually, when I write these blogs I am writing from the other side. I have just learned something or have just gone through something. I write from a place of knowing. I write from a place of complete understanding. That is not the case today. Today I write from the unknown. I write not knowing how everything will play out.

Our Daily Bread

It has been a long summer. I was away from home for most of the summer. I spent a lot of that time thinking about how little we really trust God with everything. How we often think that we can do things ourselves. If the events in Texas show us anything, it is that we really don't have control over much. Building a flood proof house doesn't stop the flood, it just makes you feel safe right up to the point that it fails. Our rock in storms shouldn't be the work of our own hands, it should be Jesus Christ the Son of God