At The Root Of Many

The Church, By And Large, Has Had A Poor Record Of Encouraging Freedom. She Has Spent So Much Time Inculcating In Us The Fear Of Making Mistakes, That She Has Made Us Like Ill-taught Piano Students: We Play Our Songs, But We Never Really Hear Them Because Our Main Concern Is Not To Make Music To Avoid Some Flub That Will Get Us In Dutch.

The Truth That Makes Us Free Is Always Ticking Away Like A Time-bomb In The Basement Of Everybody's Church.

With Jesus, However, The Device Of Parabolic Utterance Is Used Not To Explain Things To People’s Satisfaction But To Call Attention To The Unsatisfactoriness Of All Their Previous Explanations And Understandings.

One Real Thing Is Closer To God Than All The Diagrams In The World

A Lost Sheep Is, For All Practical Purposes A Dead Sheep. It Is The Admission That We Are Dead In Our Sins---that We Have No Power Of Ourselves Either To Save Ourselves Or To Convince Anyone Else That We Are Worth Saving. It Is The Recognition That Our Whole Life Is Out Of Our Hands And That If We Ever Live Again, Our Life Will Be Entirely The Gift Of Some Gracious Shepherd. God Finds Us The Desert Of Death (not In The Garden Of Improvement) And In The Power Of Jesus' Resurrection, He Puts Us On His Shoulders Rejoicing And Brings Us Home.