John Mark Hicks

This is lesson was delivered at the Northwest Christian Convention in Turner, Oregon, on June 28, 2023. The message is based on Ephesians 1:3-14.

Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; John 1:1-2, 14; Hebrews 2:14-18 Days 30-32 in Around the Bible in Eighty Days. Trinity is often either avoided or ignored; it is misunderstood or denied. The confession of one God who subsists in three “persons” (or relations) is a difficult topic. As we seek to live within the biblical narrative, the […]

“Finally,” Paul writes. He has come to the end of the letter. In this letter, he has attempted to (1) help the Corinthians understand both the importance and nature of the ministry of reconciliation inaugurated by a crucified but risen Messiah, (2) encourage the Corinthians to renew their commitment to sharing their wealth with the […]

While some have perhaps read The Shack as an actual account, the title page identifies the piece as a “novel.” This is a fictional story. But…it is nevertheless true. The movie, too, is fictional…but true. Read The Shack, watch the movie, and walk with me into the world of spiritual recovery, a journey into my […]

Early Christians in the second century understood the cry dereliction as Jesus’s feelings of despair in the face of death in view of the fact that the Father had abandoned (forsaken) him to death. The Father did not rescue him from death, even though ultimately God rescues him through death when the Father raises Jesus […]

“I suggest that within the Farewell Discourse this ‘oneness’ is expressed in a Eucharistic love feast even where diversity continues. When believers gather together around the table with self-giving love, they experience in a concrete and sacramental way the common bond that unites them; that is, the perichoretic love of the Triune God. Unity, then, […]

Everyone wants to be chosen, especially those who feel marginalized or undervalued. Many of us remember what it feels like to be the last one chosen in a pickup game of basketball or uninvited to the school party. Sometimes we feel like outsiders, and sometimes we are treated like outsiders. Sometimes we simply are outsiders. […]

Titled as an “Apocalypse” and described as a “prophecy” in the superscription, the text begins like a letter. It has all the typical elements of standard letter openings from that era but it is also thoroughly Christian, even with a Triune salutation. Author:   John Audience:   Seven Churches of Asia Salutation:   Grace and […]

Nancy Koester’s The History of Christianity in the United States (Fortress, 2007) is my current supplementary text in my undergraudate Stone-Campbell Movement course at Lipscomb University. I use it to provide the American context for Stone-Campbell history. I was surprised to read this sentence in the book (p. 61):  “[Alexander Campbell] also rejected the doctrine of Trinity […]

Since the publication of William Young’s book The Shack in the light of my own personal journey into the world of spiritual recovery (which I experienced in 2008).  I found much in Young’s novel that paralleled my own experience. It is now available on Amazon entitled:  Meeting God at the Shack: A Journey into Spiritual Recovery. For […]