Author: Dwight Clough

As [Jesus] went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?""Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." — John 9:1-3Every person is a miracle waiting to happen. Notice the players here in this little story. There is the man blind from birth. He has given up. He knows he will never see. He doesn’t even know what seeing is. He is helpless and there is no…

… apart from Me, you can do nothing. — John 15:5Are we prescribing problems or solutions?Let me give you an example. Suppose a man comes to us and says, "I hate my father." (This is a pretty common discovery once people start getting honest with themselves.) Suppose we say, "You need to forgive your father."Have we offered a solution?No. We have simply restated the problem. He hates his father. He is holding on to the anger and cannot release his father from his father’s offenses (real or imaginary). But suppose we help this man find his anger, figure out why…

… apart from Me, you can do nothing. — John 15:5Most of us would agree that Jesus is the Solution. But what exactly does that mean?It means that we need to prescribe the right Medicine to a sick world. Sometimes we get confused about that. We prescribe all sorts of things that cannot cure. Faith, by itself, cannot cure. Religion, in my view, has done more harm than good. Repentance is not the Solution. Obedience heals nothing. Character is not the Cure. Hard work won’t help. All our crafty step-by-step solutions to a better life are meaningless.I realize I’m bashing…

He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. — Mark 16:15There is a shortage of good news in our world. Imagine what it would be like if you turned on the TV and instead of hearing about wars and disasters, about crime and political scandals, you heard a report that went like this: "The president has just announced that he is going to pay off everybody’s debt. If you owe anybody anything, just send the bill to the president and he has agreed to pay it out of his own private…

Jerusalem! Jerusalem! … How often I’ve ached to embrace your children … — Matthew 23:37 The MessageA few years ago, a bumper sticker appeared on the back of police cars, minivans, family cars — for a while it was part of the fabric of American culture. It read, "Have you hugged your kid today?"I would like to turn this little saying around, and ask it a different way: "Have you let God hug His kid today?"Who is His kid? You are!Did you know that the best thing you can do for your world is let yourself be loved by God?…

But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" — Genesis 3:9Here we have God’s basic question after the fall, and man’s biggest problem. What we bring out into the open before God, God can fix. What we hide in the shadows, festers and infects, and keeps us unclean.So much of life is God wooing us out of the shadows. Not violating us by dragging us into the light, but gently awakening us to the truth: Jesus is willing; He will touch us and we will be clean.God knows all the secret corners of our hearts. What we…

Now [King] Ahab told [Queen] Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the [false] prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."Elijah was afraid and ran for his life … — 1 Kings 19:1-3In the showdown between the LORD and Baal, the LORD clearly won — fire fell, the people were convinced, rain came, and Elijah ran ahead of Ahab back to Jezreel.…

"Go and look toward the sea," [Elijah] said to his servant. And he went up and looked."There is nothing there," he said.Seven times Elijah said, "Go back." — 1 Kings 18:43Sometimes we go to the cupboard looking for answered prayer, and there’s nothing there. A pastor I knew was an air traffic controller in Korea during the Korean War. One night he was faced with a terrible dilemma. A North Korean bomber was flying around the hills trying to find their base and bomb it. Everything was blacked out, so the bomber was dropping bombs harmlessly in a deserted valley nearby.…

Then the fire of the LORD fell … — 1 Kings 18:38There’s so much that I like about this chapter: Elijah standing up to King Ahab, Elijah provoking a contest with Baal and challenging the people to choose the true God, Elijah taunting the false prophets, Elijah soaking his sacrifice with precious water, and Elijah’s brief but powerful prayer. But this is the moment that makes everything else so special: God showed up.This is the central fact of human history, the main truth of the Bible: At the right time, God shows up.Notice how God works. He first gets our…

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. — Galatians 6:16The work of God is deep inside our hearts. A new creation is what we are. Who does the creating? God does. What is the result? The result is you are uniquely you and I am uniquely me; and God, you and I can all celebrate that. While, yes, sin is sin, God does an amazing thing in this verse. He liberates us from cookie-cutter righteousness. Righteous you and righteous I look totally different, just like each of my four kids looks totally different. There’s a…