Abraham obeyed because he trusted the one who bade him to have faith. It was not blind faith, but rather an experience of God as reliable that offered Abraham another way of seeing and evaluating.

As any teacher or public speaker knows, the best way to deliver a message is to tell a story that drives the point memorably home. Rest assured that people will lose the handouts, shelve their notes, and forget the PowerPoint display in short order. But an evocative story has staying power.

“Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very Kingdom itself.

After many years of condo living, I bought my first house. I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a house—any house, even a new house, much less the very old one I got. While it’s been lots of fun turning a 100-year-old fixer-upper into my dream home, it’s also been much more work than I originally thought.

The whole day, even before sun-up, his son was chattering away. They were on their first fishing trip together and his son was excited. It soon became clear that the boy hadn’t had much experience being quiet.

During the height of the Cold War in the '50s when I was a child, every Tuesday morning at 10:30 the civil defense sirens would go off throughout Chicago. They were supposed to remind us of what we should do if there ever were to be an attack from the Soviet Union.

As the people of God, we ask for God’s loving mercy.

Every experience God gives us . . . is the perfect preparation for the future that only he can see.