The Unmasking In “The Final Unmasking” Macdonald asks the question, “Will all my weaknesses, evil habits, pettiness’s, and wrong thoughts I cannot help be revealed to all?” Jesus says, “The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made

Righteousness It is to be so in love with what is fair and right to make it impossible for a man to do anything less than be absolutely fair. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous. It is instead the love of fair

God of the Living Why do we believe in the power of death more than the power of Life? What does this say about our concept of God? MacDonald uses the story of Martha and Mary and the resurrection of Lazarus in the sermon “The Displeasure of Jesus” to express

The Incarnation “Think of a group of people trapped in a collapsed mine. And suppose that the rescue team only set up shop on the surface and never actually goes down into the mine. What would the point be? There would be no rescue. The help would not reach the

Father and Son John understood the gospel message. He had lived to a ripe old age and was writing at the end of his life. His reflections in his gospel and letters reveal the state of the Church as already in decline. Religion was settling in, and the lawyers were

Resurrection Have you ever wondered why, after the resurrection of Jesus, He did not pop into Pilate’s throne room or the monthly meeting of the Sanhedrin? What difference do you think this display would have meant for His claims of righteousness? In the last sermon on “Kingship,” we saw that

Kingdom? To the human mind and reason, a kingdom is the sovereign reach of its king, his strong right hand of power. To the Divine mind, it is the space within and its corresponding intimate relationship to its king. Divine kingship is not government rule but relational union. Not outside

The Truth will set You Free “Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.”

“If anyone tells me it is an easy thing to speak the truth, I should tell him that he had never tried it.” GM Facts vs. Truth This sermon, “The Truth,” is for those who are ready to leave “These Things We Believe” for “The One in Whom I Trust!”.

The Apostle Paul used beautiful metaphors of glass twice in his letters to the Corinthians in referring to what and how we see. The first is in First Corinthians where he says “through a glass darkly” and the second in Second Corinthians where he says “with open face beholding as

Knowing the Son Do we KNOW the Son? Or is who we know an imposter? This knowing makes all the difference in the world, both now and later! “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John

Creation In this upcoming sermon, “The Creation in Christ,” we find a paradox, an apparent contradiction in terms, which upon further reflection, make perfect sense. This contradiction is found in the verse for this sermon in John 1:3-4 NAS. “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, not even

Obedience Obedience is not about getting it right or wrong, but about guidance for living in Life. It is about learning to hear the voice, feel the nudge, or respond to the 2by4 in the moments of our day, learning to live in the freedom of self-giving love. It is

Light And Shadow We are very good at self-denial and self-deception! God gave us the gift of Self. A beautiful creature filled with light and life, and we are in complete denial of that Self! Maybe, the struggle is not in denying the self we know but fighting tooth and

Suffering Here in the sermon, “The Voice of Job,” MacDonald takes on the difficult subject of suffering. There are no easy answers to understanding the created pathway to becoming actual participants in the joy and beauty of the Divine Life we are to share. So, “If God is good, why

Fear Fear is a subject I think we are all uncomfortable with and avoid in some way. We tend to redefine it in order to avoid dealing with it. We take a verse like, “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” and change fear to “awe” instead.

“Life” is the sermon from which this blog reflects. It is another of MacDonald’s beautiful bookends. This chiasm begins with “The Last Penny,” which is all about our debt of love, then “Life” as the reflection on Penny, which is all about the Divine’s debt of love to us, the

Kingdom insights are for those who seek to live from the mind, heart, and life of Christ. For those who accept the challenge to change their minds and exercise their wills to be righteous. Righteousness is just fairness – from God to man, man to God, and man to man.

Prayer’s Difficulty is Me God is not slow to act as it appears to us. He needs no information or persuasion to give us His best. It is we who do not trust in Their goodness and faithfulness, and this is where the difficulty with prayer lies for us.  Wanting

Jesus once again tells us a parable. One like the “Temptations in the Wilderness,” which we cannot know by observation. He alone revealed it after His resurrection. This story is also about His assumption of all things human. The vicarious Life through which He carries us into His! It is

Relationship God created human relationships after His own Thoughts and Life. Relationship, therefore, is the best teacher of love and devotion. Love expressed to God and our neighbor. The context of relationship is an infinitely higher and more reliable means of achieving our education in “Life.” Relationship is the best

Having read “The Way,” we have to know that MacDonald will double down here with the addition of the word “Hardness” in the title! If we realized we were too hard on the rich young man before then what are we going to do when it is about us and

In many ways, grace is a lot more of a taskmaster than law. As hard as math and mouth (confession) may be, heart and hands up the ante in The Way considerably. The coming storm for each of us is that everyone is eligible for unconditional love and grace regardless

The Inheritance is the final sermon of the “Unspoken Sermons” series and a true reflection and summary of MacDonald’s thoughts. Abba, our Heavenly Father, is the beginning and end and everything in between. If we have not found the first light of heaven in our relationship with our Father, Brother,

yhwh Some years ago, my wife Wendy and I went to a weekend conference featuring Rabbi Kushner. During the weekend, he did a session on Exodus 3:14-15 where he discussed the history of this name. “Then God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am” [These Hebrew words are related to

Love Yourself “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Matthew 12:39 GNT “My love for others is neither less nor greater than my love for myself. My love for others is equal to my love for myself. There is no difference.” The Missing Commandment: Love Yourself – Jerry and Denise

Other? Our neighbor is anyone “other” than us! This otherness is where the “rubber meets the road,” as they say, or where “the proof is in the pudding.” There is little value in what I know about God if it bears no love for another. Not just love for one

Finished! Jesus’ living was as crucial as His dying- from Your hands Father, back to Your hands! The almost total emphasis placed on the cross in our view of Christianity has lacked a sense of balance. It makes it seem that dealing with sin is at the center of everything.

Trinity as One For our reflection on “The Eloi,” I want to jump ahead in the Sermons to “Life,” number twenty in series two. But first, I want to provide a little context about the timeline of the Unspoken Sermons. MacDonald was nearing fifty when he published series one. Series

No Adults Allowed! So, all of creation becomes the children’s playhouse and Jesus posts a sign above the door, “No Adults Allowed!” Jesus told them they could not even enter His kingdom thinking this way. They would have to become childlike by humbling themselves. (The Child in the Mist) We

Jesus did not hesitate to speak of Himself in His parables. To talk of Truth was to speak of Himself! Jesus is the Seed, the Pearl, the Talents, and the Pound. Jesus is the only Treasure, the very Heart of it! Treasure Let’s look at the last two parables, the

Today’s reflection is from C.S. Lewis’s book The Problem of Pain. It is a rather long passage abridged from his chapter Divine Goodness of some fifteen pages. Here we find the “Intolerable Compliment.” This compliment reveals that God cares more for our character than for our comfort! God’s Master Piece

At this point in the Sermons, MacDonald has laid a firm foundation of his thoughts on which to begin to build. Child, Father, Inheritance, Love, and Faith are cornerstones of any Christian belief. We are now ready to place a new layer of stones upon these, beginning with forgiveness. Forgiveness

My Thumb In this introduction to The Higher Faith, MacDonald places faith squarely within his relational context. Faith is trust in a Big Heavenly Father! Let me start with a personal story of my own journey of faith. It begins long, long ago with a Dale far, far away. I’m

Truth in Tension MacDonald is perhaps the most balanced teacher I have ever read. He presents a clear and bold statement of the singular motivation of God as Love through using the images of the refiner’s and consuming fire. His sermon, The Consuming Fire, places this fire of love in

In MacDonald’s sermon “Abba, Father!” he defines spiritual adoption as transformation. For him, as it was for St. Paul, adoption was not our familiar western version of taking a non-family member into our family, but an eastern one of a spiritual coming of age, a Jewish bar mitzvah. For us,

Jesus, in His seemingly illogical and counterintuitive teachings on children, reveals the heart of the King and His Kingdom. MacDonald illustrates this in his sermon The Child in the Mist placing divine childlikeness in high contrast to what he calls “…adult, so-called worldly wisdom.” This adult perspective robs us of our

“Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” Galatians 4:6 NASB I think it is fair to say MacDonald’s primary passion was revealing and restoring the Father’s heart to His children. Our refusal to acknowledge God as our Father