Teachings, messages, vital life learning, irrelevances, and other musings about the Bible from The Salvation Army's Captain Roger McCort. Life has few guarantees, but here's one: You will find something new or interesting in every message or you can reach out to me and I will provide you with additional new and interesting facts, free of charge. Guaranteed.
What does it mean to live in the light anyway? Is that even a thing? And if it is, can it be done? Is there room for deliverance beside judgment?
A message for advent week two from TSA-Napa!
As we enter the Advent season, please join us on a journey through the wonders of light in dark places.
Even my dark, Scrooge-like heart can be lit up when the Light comes...
Gratitude and praise are important parts of living a fulfilled life.
And then there's the goat...
Jesus says it again and again: His followers are to be servants to one another and to all those around them. So why are we always clamoring to be leaders?
That thing you just read in the Bible might not mean what you think it means.
It might mean that and more.
It might not mean that at all.
And it might mean you need to engage your brain and do a little …
Cannibalism, pigeon dung soup, and the living dead - Can the Bible get any weirder?
All these stories and more weave together to focus on a very true promise which is extended to you and to me: God wa…
When it seems that the ghosts of the past can tell you more than the God of the past, present, and future, your life has quite likely taken a wrong turn.
Beware what shades may come to haunt you, if t…
Looking for a good horror story? There are hundreds of them in the Bible and over the next weeks we are going to look at a few of them. This week: While at a nice dinner party, the peace and celebrat…
In the last days before his arrest, Jesus told a story which would have left his hearers stunned and struggling for a response. The chief priests, scribes, and elders recognized that they were partic…
This parable isn't about what you think it is.
It's also not about the same thing as that other one.
It's its own thing.
Your thing.
Mine too.
Ours.
I know it sounds crazy; it's Jesus talking, right? He mi…
When the storms of life threaten, do you let them drive you on to the rocks? That's what I did this week, and it was wrong.
Finding peace in a storm. This week's message from TSA-Napa.
Imagine it's October 1, 2001, and you are a Taliban member in New York opening a storefront selling Osama bin Laden shirts. Is that loyalty, or is it just insane?
Jesus told a story where he described…
Then there was the time Jesus told a story about a man with fancy underpants and how dogs licked the sores of a man rotting outside his gate. Why do we care? Because it is a story which intimately ap…
What can a morally ambiguous story teach us about true justice? Jesus tells a story about horrible people doing horrible things to prove the point that God is good.
Fair warning: You'll need to think …
Jesus said some crazy things that upset a lot of people. He often used stories to say those things. One time he said that there was a man who paid people enough to live on. This made others very angr…
Righteousness may not be what you think it is.
Jesus made a suggestion about what it means to be righteous that made everyone who heard it uncomfortable - which is too bad, because it should really ma…
More of the crazy things Jesus said and taught. Today: Why would he compare the Kingdom of Heaven to an essential condiment for hot dogs?
Listen and find out!
This message has the worst starting line I've every used.
Seriously.
I'm shocked people didn't run screaming out as soon as I mentioned ancient economics.
Of course, what Jesus ACTUALLY said? A hundred …
The shortest parable of Jesus seems easy to understand, but...
It does come right on the heels of Jesus saying that he uses parables so that people won't easily understand what he's teaching. So we'd …
Ethnic slurs are never acceptable, but that hasn't kept translators from naming this parable with one.
We like to over-teach this one in modern times, and in doing so we miss how truly shocking what J…