Adam Hamilton Quotes
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The Bible calls us to love our neighbors, and to do justice and love kindness, not to indiscriminately kill one another.
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We live in bodies that are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet they are not immune to illness and pain. We have hearts that are capable of experiencing great love, but sometimes they get broken.
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If God is not sending earthquakes, destroying economies and inflicting pain upon human beings, what is God doing? God works through people, calling them to help their neighbors in need. God comforts His people, walking with them even 'through the valley of the shadow of death.'
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Effective preaching starts with loving the people we're preaching to.
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Some Christians see the biblical teaching on homosexuality as reflecting the culture and times in which the Bible was written and not reflecting God's eternal perspective on homosexual people. Others believe these scriptures represent God's timeless will for how human beings practice intimacy.
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When sermons start where people live - their questions, struggles, and concerns - and then offer a timely and helpful word from the Scriptures, people are more interested in hearing what else the Scriptures have to say.
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One thing that helps to stretch me is to listen to other preacher's sermons. Every year, I will listen to at least ten other preachers, both to hear God speak to me, and also to evaluate their preaching to see what I can learn and how I can improve my own preaching.
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I am a pastor, and I teach and preach the Bible to my congregation every week. But the Bible is not a manufacturer's handbook. Neither is it a science textbook nor a guidebook for public policy.
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God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things.
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Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical. Reading it uncritically, without understanding the cultural and historical setting of the text, leaves us forced to accept scientific and sociological norms of the ancient Near East from 3,000 years ago.
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Frequent prayer has great value. On its surface, this sounds simplistic. But if we're to keep prayer at the forefront of our ministry, we and our people have to pray again and again.
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We live on a planet that is amazing, beautiful, and full of wonder but not protected from powerful destructive forces of nature. We are capable of doing wonderful and selfless things but also self-absorbed and harmful things. This is the world we live in.
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Jesus' own witness of sacrificial love and forgiveness, and his work to heal the sick and care for those in need, represent God's ways and vision for us.
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Our society is divided by the culture wars into the Left and Right, and the United Methodist Church has always stood historically in the center and has been willing to listen to and to bring together those things that often are found in opposite camps.
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While some misuse their freedom to perpetrate evil, millions respond by feeling compelled to use their freedom to do good.
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Christians believe that God is everywhere and is involved in our lives at every moment, whether we publicly acknowledge God or not.
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We don't need mandatory, non-sectarian prayers read over the loudspeaker to 'put God back in schools.' God never left the schools. God is still at work through the hundreds of thousands of gifted teachers and administrators, committed parents, and passionate volunteers who seek to help give our children 'a future with hope.'
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The earliest stories in Genesis were not written to tell primeval history. They were written to tell readers about themselves and about God.
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My aim is that every sermon series I preach is prepared as though I were teaching a college-level course.
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Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical.
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Many Christians do not believe God sends tornadoes. But they do believe that God walks with His children through the storms, that He sends His people to help after the storms, and that with and through God, there is always hope.
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I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true, and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths... That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith.
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If 'everything happens for a reason,' then every act of evil is ultimately God's doing.
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Why did the earthquake and tsunami occur in Japan? Was it the act of an angry God? No, it was the result of the movement and collision of the earth's tectonic plates - a process driven by the earth's need to regulate its own internal temperature. Without the process that creates earthquake, our planet could not sustain life.