Adventist Review Podcasts

No one can grasp the grace of God unless God teaches him, embraces him, and holds him in an unexpected kindness. There’s no intellect so vast; there’s not a mystic so devout that he can plumb the depth of love by private contemplation. “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine” (Isa 55:8). Only th

The gospel is only as good as the God who asks us to believe it. If He’s the disappointed, vengeful deity we have pictured in our frightened imaginations, then we do well to hide, to stay away: why would we risk ourselves with Him? But if Christ is, as His Word says, the Lord whose love for us survives even our worst choices and most defiant behaviors, then we may crawl out from

A muscular young athlete, bench-pressing massive iron; stonemasons, deeply-focused, chiseling the capstone for a tall cathedral spire; a driven young executive, burning midnight oil as she assesses market data. What do these pictures have in common? All celebrate intense, prodigious effort, spent to take the doer to the top in sport, in craftsmanship, in business. Our world’s awa

It’s not called “practicing” for nothing. On some great future day, the liberating, life-affirming grace we each receive from Jesus will also be the grace we give as freely to those who wound us, irritate our peace, or call out for our love and care. Between the “now” and “then” there’s a lot of practicing to do—a daily repetition of kind words, forgiving acts, an

If you’ve ever been forgiven; if you’ve been held when you were wrong, or bitter, or confused—you know the grace that never can repay the giver. So we surrender to the goodness God implants in human hearts. “We know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love” (Rom 5:5). We come to understand God’s grace when we ar

“When I’m deep in a hole, lower a rope, not a shovel.” The last thing we need when we’ve dug ourselves profoundly into pain or confusion or sin is more of the same. Our best efforts got us there: our best efforts won’t deliver us. The pit only gets deeper—and so does our frustration. As Scripture says, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads

It’s a scene played out 10 million times in the 30 days since Christmas: “You shouldn’t have . . .” “But I didn’t get you anything. . .” “I didn’t hear we were exchanging gifts . . .” A stranger from another planet might conclude that our annual Christmas gift-giving is actually an exquisite balancing act—designed to keep each party from feeling awkward for ha

That impulse in our souls to pray—to find our knees; to stammer out the words—grows from an early, dim awareness of just how much we need the grace of God. We pray because we cannot fix our world or ourselves. We kneel because we’re powerless to heal sick children, pay the bills, or mend unhealthy marriages. We call out as we weep for all the clash between our living and God�

Like all the stories Jesus told, this one comes very close to home. We justly celebrate the prodigal. He finds himself among the pigs, then soberly concludes that he should go back home. And we deplore that bitter brother whose body never left the farm, but whose hard heart had left the Father long ago. Unlike each other as they seem, both shared a common malady. Neither prized the

The diet lasts a dozen days. The treadmill hasn’t spun 10 miles. The Bible sits where it was left, unopened and unsavored. We grieve the effortless unraveling of all the goals we wanted to achieve—to lose the weight; increase the steps; find hope and quiet in God’s Word. We are too close to dreams undone, to lofty visions gone awry. So how does God address our lack of grit a