Thoroughly Furnished

08/27/2026

There seem to be two extremes when it comes to the conversation regarding grace and works. On one end of the spectrum are the people who believe we are preaching too much grace. The argument here is that if we focus too heavily on grace, we are giving people an excuse to sin. Often called a license to sin.

If God is going to forgive us regardless, what reason do we have to actually change?

On the other hand, are those who believe we are preaching too many works. The fear here is that if we emphasize everything people need to do, we are creating behavior modification instead of hearts that are surrendered to God. I don’t believe either extreme has it right. In fact, I believe the argument itself can miss the bigger point because Scripture does not pit grace and works against each other.

They are not two different avenues we must pick to navigate.

Grace is the root, works are the fruit. Grace is the source, obedience is the response. I believe this distinction matters because when we speak of works separate from the grace of God, we create modern-day Pharisees.

The person who knows the rules, keeps the rules, and takes pride in the fact they are able to keep the rules. They will begin to measure themselves against people who aren’t as disciplined, aren’t as successful, aren’t as far along-and what then happens? Works become the evidence of pride instead of the evidence of a surrendered heart.

I know because I’ve seen it in my own life, seen it in the lives of others, and watched it unfold in the church year after year.

It is possible to be excellent at doing the right things with a heart still cold and unyielding toward God. We can become so preoccupied with how to get a person to conform to the right way of acting we miss the much more important question of whether they are being transformed by the Spirit of God. I don’t mean to suggest works don’t matter. They absolutely do.
Scripture is very clear that we are saved unto good works.

James tells us that faith apart from works is dead and challenges us to “show your faith to me without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18). We aren’t given permission to claim faith while exhibiting no evidence of that faith in our lives. But that is precisely why grace and works cannot be separated in the life of a genuine follower of Jesus.

When Paul argues against “works” here (in Ephesians 2:8-9), he isn’t arguing against the existence of works; he’s arguing against works as the basis of our salvation. When James argues for “works” (in James 2:14-26), he isn’t arguing that works save us; he’s arguing that a faith that produces absolutely nothing is not saving faith. Paul says we are saved by grace through faith, not because of our works.
James says genuine saving faith produces works. Works are grace driven effort in Christ.

These two truths aren’t arguing with each other; they are preventing the gospel from falling into either of two erroneous ditches. Grace is the vehicle by which we are saved, but grace is also the motivation for why we change. Grace is the root from which all the good fruits and works which ought eventually appear in our lives flow.
Grace is the engine of power in our lives, not just the safety net for when we fail.

Listen to what Paul wrote in Titus 2:11-14: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce worldly impurity and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous to do good works.

Did you catch that?

It is the grace of God that trains us to live godly lives. God’s grace doesn’t just catch us when we fall; it teaches us how to walk.

I think that’s where the disconnect happens for some of us when we hear the word “grace.” We can frame grace as nothing more than what saves us when we mess up-the safety net that prevents us from crashing to the bottom when we fail. But grace is more than the catch.

Grace is the engine driving our walk with God.

It doesn’t just forgive us when we stumble. It transforms us fundamentally as people by changing what we want, changing what we pursue, and changing how we behave. It empowers us to live a life we could never produce through raw willpower alone. This is why I think people who worry that preaching grace gives people license to sin are looking at the wrong end of the stick.

Grace doesn’t medicate the symptoms and ignore the disease.

Grace attacks the root. If all I am focused on is getting a person to stop behaving in a certain way without dealing with the underlying issue in their heart, I may be successful for a time, but I have not achieved true transformation. I may be so good at getting people to stop having s*x outside of marriage, stop drinking, stop viewing po*******hy, stop lying, stop gossiping, etc., that all their behavior is corrected.

All those things are evil, and God’s commands matter, but what happens if I manage to stop all of those behaviors and the person is still filled with pride, bitterness, jealousy, anger, selfishness, or a critical spirit?

Have I actually produced godly righteousness?
That’s why I believe we should sometimes be more concerned with fruit than talking about works.

Are you becoming more loving, more peaceful, more kind, more patient, more faithful, more gentle, more self-controlled-the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5? Fruit reveals the health of the roots. The apple is evidence of the life in the apple tree, not the cause of that life.

You can’t animate a dead branch by hanging an apple on it.

The apple is present because something alive is going on within the tree, and that life eventually manifests outwardly through the fruit.

It is the same with our work. It isn’t what makes us spiritually alive, but spiritual life should manifest outwardly through our work. The fruit is not the source of the tree’s life; the tree’s life produces the fruit.

Similarly, our obedience doesn’t earn us God’s grace; rather, God’s grace working within us should eventually manifest in our work.
And when we separate works from grace, I think we ultimately produce one of two things.

A modern-day Pharisee, or complete despair.

The modern-day Pharisee.

There are people who are very good at keeping rules. They know what Scripture says. They know what is right and wrong. They have disciplines, boundaries, and standards, and some of those things are genuinely good. But if those things are not rooted in humility and dependence upon the grace of God, obedience can become a measuring stick they use against everyone else.

That is what makes the Pharisee so dangerous. The problem wasn’t simply that they cared about obedience. The problem was that they had learned obedience and adherence to the law was holiness, not the heart behind the law. They could see the speck in someone else’s eye while completely missing the condition of their own heart.

Despair.

Not everyone who tries to live by works becomes arrogant. Some become exhausted. They know God’s standard, they genuinely want to obey it, and they repeatedly discover that they cannot live up to it. They promise themselves they will do better next time, establish another boundary, make another commitment, and try a little harder, only to discover again that their own strength isn’t enough.

Eventually, they either learn to hide their failures or begin to believe that they simply aren’t capable of being the kind of Christian God has called them to be. They live under the constant pressure of knowing the standard without experiencing the power necessary to meet it.

This is where grace changes everything.

Scripture tells us that apart from God, even our righteousness is as filthy rags. Isaiah’s imagery is intentionally shocking, particularly within the Jewish understanding of blood and ceremonial uncleanness. The point is not simply that our sinful actions are worthless; it is that even the righteous things we might point to as evidence of our goodness cannot become the foundation of our standing before God.

That should humble the Pharisee, but it should also give hope to the person living in despair. If our best righteousness could never save us, then the answer was never going to be, “Try harder.”

The answer was always grace.

But grace does not mean God has lowered the standard so that we don’t have to pay much attention to holiness. It means that God does something in us that we could never do by ourselves. He doesn’t just forgive us for failing to be everything He wants us to be; He uses his Spirit to begin the process of making us the people He wants us to be.

The Christian life is not God handing us His law and saying, “Okay, get this done.” It is God calling us to a life of holiness and then giving us His Spirit to empower us to do it. It’s like asking someone who doesn’t know how to write to churn out a novel. It’s not necessarily because they don’t want to write the greatest novel; it’s because they can’t.

We do need targets to hit – that’s our human nature. We need to know what obedience looks like, that is what the Word of God declares we should do. But we also have to recognize that what God calls us to do we can only do through the grace of God at work within us.

Furthermore, when a heart has genuinely encountered the living God, it wants to live life in a way that honors Him. It doesn’t mean the Christian never fails or stumbles. It means that something deeper has been transformed. The direction of the life begins to change because the heart has been changed.

There simply is no way that a truly changed heart can live the same kind of life that it used to live after encountering the grace of God.

That is why the battle between grace and works must end.

The people who worry that grace gives people license to sin must recognize that grace is precisely what teaches us to deny ungodliness. Those who emphasize works must recognize that the works that God desires are not products of our own effort.

We don’t need less grace so people will do more holy things. We need to understand grace so deeply that we will do holy things because that’s the kind of life that flow from an encounter with it. We don’t need to promote grace as an alternative to works. Instead, we must present grace as the source of works.

Grace is the root; works is the fruit. Grace is the salvation, the teaching, the power, and the change.

We weren’t created to be great rule keepers. We were created to live life surrendering to God, being increasingly changed by God, and increasingly conformed to the image of Christ.

Once grace has been planted in our heart, works aren’t manufactured; they bloom naturally as the tree grows and matures.

08/27/2026

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. ~ Kierkegaard

08/25/2026

There are few things in life that make me angrier than watching doctrine get bent to serve an earthly agenda. It isn’t about politics in and of itself, its so much deeper. Taking a word that exists to tear down every wall ever built between man and God, then using it to build one back up.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker that said: heaven has a strict immigration policy and borders, hell is wide open.

It sounds clever. It sounds like it’s saying something true and hard, the kind of thing that gets a nod and a share.

To me that’s exactly the problem. It’s clever enough to sound biblical without being true, and that combination is what makes it dangerous.

The last invitation in the Bible, the last chapter of scripture itself, says the opposite:

“The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” (Revelation 22:17)

Before we jump to all the other thoughts that come to mind, can we just sit with that for a minute?

Without price. No vetting. No waiting list. No quota. The very last thing God says to us before the book closes is come, and the invitation is left open to whoever wants it.

If it were the only instance, maybe there could be some debate. But, that is the pattern of the whole book.

Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Not the qualified. Not the vetted. The tired. The burdened. That is the entrance requirement, if you want to call it that.

Exhaustion.

He said it again, even more plainly: “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37)

Not might not. Will never. There is no scenario in that sentence where a person comes to Christ and gets turned away at the door.

John 3:16 says it in the most quoted verse in the book: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The world. Whoever. Not a nation, not a people group, not a class of the deserving.

Peter, writing to the church, said God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) That’s not policy language, that’s desire. God is not reluctantly tolerating broad access to grace. He wants it. He is patient because he wants it.

Paul, quoting the prophet Joel, said, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13) Everyone.

And centuries before any of that, Isaiah wrote, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!” (Isaiah 55:1) This isn’t a New Testament innovation. The openness of God’s invitation runs the whole length of scripture, Old Testament to New.

And when Peter needed to be shown that this openness applied to a Gentile centurion, not just his own people, God gave him a vision and a command: stop calling common or unclean what God has called clean. (Acts 10) Peter had to be corrected. The instinct to draw a smaller circle than God draws is an old instinct, and it dies hard.

Is Jesus the only way? Yes. 100%….
He said so himself, and I believe it without hedging. But being the only way and having a strict immigration policy are not the same claim, and treating them as the same claim is where this whole metaphor falls apart.

An immigration policy sorts people by circumstance. Where you were born. What paperwork you carry. What government stamped what document. It is, by definition, a system of exclusion based on things outside a person’s control or choice.

The gospel does not work that way, not even a little. The gospel sorts by exactly one thing: whether you come. That’s it. Rich or poor, first world or third, documented or undocumented, moral failure or moral success story, it does not matter. The door does not check your papers. It checks whether you knocked.

That’s what makes this phrase more than just a bad metaphor. It borrows the language of exclusion, of gates and quotas and enforcement, and it smuggles that language into the one place in the universe explicitly built to have none of it. It doesn’t just oversimplify the gospel. It inverts it.

Here is what I want to communicate, still a little angry, but I hope in a way that’s useful instead of just loud. Don’t let a clever phrase reshape what Christ actually said. Go back to his words.

Whosoever will, let him come. Not whosoever qualifies. Not whosoever was born in the right place. Whosoever will. The invitation is extended to every single person, no exceptions.

That includes you. Whatever you’ve done, wherever you’ve been, whatever border you think you’re standing on the wrong side of. The door isn’t checking papers.

Come.

08/19/2026

Ephesians 6

08/03/2026

“Claiming to be wise, they became fools,”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭1‬:‭22‬ ‭ESV‬‬

We live in, perhaps, the most educated generation in history. The entire worlds library is practically at our fingertips. We have more access to information and learning than ever thought possible. Yet for all our knowledge, many have become convinced that we have outgrown the need for God, or worse than that distorted the truth to create their own version of God.

I had a brief conversation after church yesterday with a young woman who got me thinking about the opening passage. She said as we talked about struggling communicating with those that see God as austere and punishing that it is so difficult to talk to “intellectuals” about Jesus.
Paul isn’t writing about people who lacked intelligence. He was addressing those that had believed they had arrived at a level of “consciousness” that transcends the need for a God.

That’s a very dangerous place to be.
The heavens, the earth, the complexity of life, and the order of the universe all testify that there is and intelligence behind everything we see and experience. Notice that Paul didn’t say these people weren’t smart enough. He says they became fools because they allowed confidence in their own reasoning to replace humility before God…

Many people have made the mistake of pitting faith and intellect against each other. They give the false choice of being thoughtful or being religious. The faith of Christians should not be afraid of questions, scrutiny, or delving into the unknown. Actually, some of the world’s most famous scientists and brightest minds pursued science because they believed the universe was created by and orderly God whose creation could be understood.

The issue isn’t intelligence. It’s intellectual pride.
The gospel has always looked foolish to people who believe human reason alone is sufficient, or to those who have the preconceived notions of the truth of who God is. That is why Paul also wrote to the church in Corinth and said, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise”.

To many Jews, and Muslims the idea that the Creator of the universe would come into his creation as a man, live among us, willing take our punishment through the cross, and then raise again on the third day, is absurd. God doesn’t operate that way they say. To the those that question or outright deny the existence of God, it’s even more preposterous.

Yet Paul says that what appears foolish is actually the wisdom of God.

That leaves us with two choices.

We can become so “wise” that we convince ourselves the universe is nothing more than a cosmic accident. We can believe that life somehow emerged from non-life, that order came from chaos without intention, that morality is simply a human invention, and that every account of God is nothing more than mythology. I’ve heard people argue that Jesus is no different than the gods of Greece, Rome, or Egypt. According to this view, Christianity is simply another story humanity created to explain the unknown.

Or we can be “foolish” enough to believe that God really exists.

That Jesus of Nazareth really walked the earth. The overwhelming majority of historians, including many who are atheists or agnostics, agree on that much. The existence of Jesus is not seriously disputed in mainstream historical scholarship. The real question has never been whether He existed. The question is whether He truly was who He claimed to be, and whether He actually rose from the dead.

When you begin to examine the evidence honestly, believing in God is not a retreat from reason. It is the most reasonable conclusions a person can come to. These certainly aren’t the only reasons I believe, but they are ten of my favorites.

1. The Universe Had a Beginning
For much of the last couple centuries, physicists believed the universe had always existed. Today, modern cosmology points to a beginning of space, time, and matter. If the universe began to exist, it cannot be its own cause. Whatever caused it must exist outside of time and space.
Genesis begins with four simple words: “In the beginning God...” Those words have aged remarkably well.

2. The Fine-Tuning of the Universe
The physical constants that govern our universe exist within incredibly precise ranges. If gravity were slightly stronger or weaker, stars could not form. If other constants shifted even slightly, chemistry as we know it would be impossible and life could never exist.

The universe doesn’t merely exist.

Earth in particular is astonishingly calibrated for life.

3. Information Always Points to Intelligence
DNA isn’t just chemistry. It contains an enormous amount of coded information. Whenever we encounter meaningful information, whether it’s a book, a computer program, or architectural plans, we immediately recognize there was an intelligent mind behind it.

Why would the most sophisticated information system in existence be the lone exception?

4. Objective Morality
Most people agree there are things that are objectively wrong. Murdering innocent children. Human trafficking. Genocide. We don’t merely dislike these things. We believe they are evil.

But if there is no God, where does objective morality come from? If morality is only a product of evolution or cultural preference, then “evil” becomes nothing more than a personal opinion.

Our moral law points to a moral Lawgiver.

5. Human Consciousness
Science explains an incredible amount about how the brain functions. What it has never fully explained is why we possess consciousness itself. Why are we self-aware?

Why do we long for beauty, purpose, justice, and love?

Matter explains many things.

Mind points us toward a greater Mind.

6. The Reliability of Scripture
The New Testament is one of the best-attested documents from the ancient world. We possess thousands of ancient manuscripts, allowing scholars to compare copies with remarkable confidence. There is more manuscript evidence, in multiple language, and it a widespread area, that show the existence of Jesus than there is for Julius Ceaser, yet we never debate the existence of him. That doesn’t automatically prove Christianity is true, but it does mean we know with great certainty what the original authors wrote.

The real question isn’t whether the text has been preserved.

The real question is whether what it records actually happened.

7. The Resurrection Best Explains the Evidence
Nearly every historian agrees on several facts. Jesus was crucified. His followers sincerely believed they saw Him alive again. Those frightened disciples became bold proclaimers of the gospel despite persecution and death.

James the brother of Jesus, once so skeptical that he thought there was something wrong with Jesus, became a leader in the church and was martyred. Paul went from persecuting Christians to becoming one himself.

Many explanations have been offered.

None account for the evidence as convincingly as the resurrection itself.

8. Fulfilled Prophecy
Long before Jesus was born, the Old Testament described details that Christians believe were fulfilled in His life. Isaiah spoke of the suffering servant. Micah foretold His birthplace. David described scenes in Psalm 22 that closely resemble the crucifixion centuries before crucifixion was even practiced in Israel.

One prophecy may invite questions.

Taken together, they demand attention.

9. Jesus Is Unlike Anyone Else
Every major religious leader pointed people toward truth.

Jesus claimed to be the Truth.

He forgave sins. He accepted worship. He claimed equality with the Father. He predicted His own death and resurrection. Those are not the claims of someone who merely wanted to be remembered as a wise teacher.

Either He was deceived.

He was deceptive.

Or He was exactly who He claimed to be.

10. Changed Lives
This one is deeply personal.
For two thousand years people from every nation, language, and background have testified that Christ transformed them. Addictions have been broken. Marriages restored. Bitter hearts softened. Proud people humbled. Hopeless people filled with peace.

One changed life may be dismissed.

Millions deserve consideration.

None of these reasons force someone to believe. God has never desired forced faith. Love always requires a response that is freely given. But together they present a compelling case that faith is not the enemy of reason. In many ways, faith is where reason naturally leads when we are willing to follow the evidence without prejudice.

The tragedy Paul describes in Romans 1 isn’t that people became educated. Education is a gift. Science is a gift. Logic is a gift. The tragedy is that they became so impressed with those gifts that they forgot the Giver. They believed their own understanding was sufficient to explain everything, and in doing so they closed themselves off to the One who made everything.

That temptation still exists today.

There is a kind of wisdom that eventually becomes foolish because it refuses to acknowledge its own limits. It assumes that if something cannot be measured, tested, or placed under a microscope, it cannot be real. It mistakes skepticism for sophistication and confidence for certainty.

The gospel calls us to a different kind of wisdom.

It asks us to be humble enough to admit that we don’t know everything. It invites us to consider that the evidence may point beyond ourselves. It calls us to believe that the Creator entered His creation, carried our sin to a cross, walked out of a borrowed tomb, and offers eternal life to everyone who trusts Him.

To the world, that sounds foolish.
According to Paul, that is where true wisdom begins.

The question isn’t whether you’re intelligent.
The question is this: Are you so convinced of your own wisdom that you’ve become a fool?

Or are you willing to become “foolish” enough to discover the wisdom of God?

Because sometimes the wisest person in the room is the one humble enough to kneel before the cross.

07/29/2026

07/29/2026

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” — 1 Corinthians 2:2

This statement was not because Paul lacked other things to say. Paul was a brilliant thinker, skilled in the Torah and well read. It was because he knew that if the Church ever drifted from the cross, it would eventually drift from Christ Himself.

In Romans he tells us that he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. Then, writing to the Corinthians, he explains what that gospel looks like. “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”

The very thing the world mocked became the greatest display of God’s wisdom, power, justice, and love. Humanity looked at a bleeding Savior and saw defeat. Heaven looked at the same cross and saw redemption unfolding exactly as God had planned from the foundation of the world.

What breaks my heart as I look around is, too often WE have become so fascinated with what Jesus gives that we have forgotten to be fascinated with Jesus Himself. We speak often about healed marriages, freedom from addiction, restored families, purpose, peace, and abundant life.

Those things are real, and I have seen God do every one of them. I have watched marriages that seemed beyond repair become healthy again. I have seen hundreds of people set free from addiction. I even witnessed a man come off the heart transplant list after surrendering his life to Christ.

Those stories are beautiful, but they are not the gospel.

They are the fruit of the gospel.

Maybe we are so zealous that we want people to come to Jesus, so we start to “sell” Him. If we preach anything else the heart cannot be changed. We are only changed by the gospel.

The gospel is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Every one of us stood guilty before a holy God with nothing to offer in our defense. We were not people who simply needed better habits or more discipline. We needed rescue because sin had separated us from the God who created us, and there was nothing we could do to bridge that gap.

Every person on this planet was destined for everlasting punishment that wasn’t even designed for us. The question has never been how can God send someone to hell? All of us are headed there without the interjection of a savior.

Before the world was ever spoken into existence, God already knew the price His Son would pay to redeem His people. Jesus wasn’t a backup plan. He wasn’t plan B. He was the plan before Adam and Eve were ever formed.

Jesus bore our sin. He carried our punishment. He gave us His righteousness.

Everything else flows from that.

One of the subtle dangers is we can unintentionally invite people to come to Jesus primarily because of what they hope He will do for them. We tell them He can fix their marriage, heal their wounds, break their addictions, restore their finances, calm their anxiety, or give them purpose. Again, none of those things are false. God delights in transforming lives.

However, transformation is the fruit of reconciliation, not the message itself.

I think all of us know what it feels like to be valued only for what we can provide. Perhaps someone wanted your influence, your money, your connections, your generosity, or your time, but they never really wanted you. There is something heartbreaking about realizing a relationship was built more on what you owned than on who you were.

How often are we guilty of not wanting Jesus, but wanting His stuff?

Do we treasure Christ, or do we simply want access to everything that belongs to Him?

When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” He was not speaking about financial poverty. He was describing the person who has abandoned every illusion of self-sufficiency. The poor in spirit have come to the end of themselves. They know they cannot save themselves, fix themselves, clean themselves up, or make themselves righteous. They have stopped trusting in their own strength and have placed their confidence entirely in Christ.

That is exactly what Paul meant when he called himself a doulos, a slave of Christ. A slave possesses nothing because everything belongs to his master. His future, his plans, his identity, and his hope are no longer found in himself.

They are found completely in the one he serves. The Christian life begins when we stop believing we are sufficient and discover that Christ always is.

Perhaps these questions are worth asking ourselves.

If Jesus never improved another circumstance in my life, would He still be enough for me?
When I pray, do I spend more time pursuing God’s hand than pursuing His heart?

If every blessing disappeared tomorrow but Christ remained, would I believe I still possessed everything?

Those questions are uncomfortable because they expose what we truly treasure.

Job lost his wealth, his children, his health, and nearly every earthly comfort he possessed. Even his wife, overcome with grief, urged him toward foolishness instead of faithfulness. Yet after everything was stripped away, Job still had the one treasure that mattered most. He belonged to God. That reality outweighed every earthly loss because the presence of God is a greater gift than anything God could ever place into our hands.

I wish I could say I always live with that perspective. I do not. My attention drifts toward lesser things. I begin measuring God’s goodness by my circumstances instead of by Calvary, and before long I find myself pursuing what Jesus can do for me instead of simply delighting in who He is.

That is why I needed to write this as much as anyone needs to read it. This is not a reminder born from mastery but from repentance. My heart needs to return again and again to the place where God’s love was displayed most clearly, where His justice and mercy embraced, and where my greatest need was forever answered.

The cross is not merely where Christianity begins.

It is where every Christian must continually return.