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 Talents and the Pound, as […]
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 I had a decade from
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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 The removal of the mist
God’s gift to us! God’s covenant with Abraham was a covenant of faith, a gift to us! Let’s look at blood covenant in general and Abraham’s covenant specifically. Abraham is called “our first father in the faith.” It is hard to overstate the significance of Abraham and his role in God’s dealing with humanity. He
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 in my mid-thirties and at
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 a beautiful tension. “The truth
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, it is a transformation from
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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 childhood. Childhood, which is childlikeness,
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“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 is the primary difficulty of