StephenBarkley.com

No net less wide than a man’s whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred Fish. — C. S. Lewis (Reflections on the Psalms) Something must have happened to the people in exile. Maybe they heard rumors from home. Perhaps they were suffering some new form of humiliation by their [...]

We cannot generate faith ourselves. We cannot possess greater faith by fostering or facilitating something inside our psyches. There is no incantation, meditative technique, guru-gimmick or mystical magic by which we can generate faith out of our own resources. — Victor Shepherd (Seasons of Grace) As the exiles began to make their home in foreign [...]

The true prophetic message always calls us to a spiritual defiance of the world as it now is. — Richard Foster (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home) There are two types of false prophets in the world: frauds and psychopaths. I’m not sure which variety is more dangerous. Frauds know they’re wrong. They are in [...]

The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it. — [...]

In order to promote a sentimentalized love we try to excuse God from everything that might cause us to fear him. — Gerhard O. Forde (On Being a Theologian of the Cross) Imagine yourself as one of Ezekiel’s contemporaries in Babylon. You already have reason to believe that the priest-turned-prophet is a few fries short [...]

Just so anyone reading this knows, I am taking some holidays from the office this fall, so I am going to miss this week’s devotions. Once I’m back, I will be posting one devotion per week due to the increased schedule of the fall season. In Christ, Steve. PS — I hope you stick around [...]

Our security rests not in our grip on him but his grip on us. — Victor Shepherd (Seasons of Grace) Jesus accomplished a lot of his teaching—especially to the crowds—by using parables.  He would tell a story about some ordinary event in order to teach a more profound truth. Once Ezekiel returned from his vision [...]

The quickest way to the heart is through a wound. — John Piper (Desiring God) God wanted nothing less for Israel than to give them a new heart. God demanded to be the sole object of Israel’s affection. He would settle for nothing less than all. Israel was wounded. The foremost prophet of God questioned [...]

When I no more can stir my soul to move, And life is but the ashes of a fire; When I can but remember that my heart Once used to live and love, long and aspire— Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art; Be thou the calling, before all answering love, And [...]

“Are we on God’s side?” has always been a better question than “Is God on ours?” — Jim Wallis (God’s Politics) When Pelatiah died, as we read earlier, Ezekiel cried out in grief to God, “will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel” (11:13, NRSV)? The last time Ezekiel blurted out his [...]