Rooted in Jesus Grace

It’s becoming a familiar Sunday scene. The pastor opens his Bible and declares passionately, “We are a church built on Sola Scriptura — Scripture alone is our authority!”  Ten minutes later, he quotes Dallas Willard or Richard Foster and urges the congregation to practice listening prayer and to attend the upcoming Hearing God seminar.   At first, it sounds profound — like deep spirituality combined with solid theology. But there’s a problem: Sola Scriptura and contemplative prayer come from two entirely different worlds. To preach both is to talk out of both sides of the mouth. These views aren’t compatible. One stands on the foundation of divine revelation; the other builds on mystical experience. What Sola Scriptura Really Means The phrase Sola Scriptura was never meant as a trendy slogan. It was a battle cry. The Reformers — Luther, Calvin, Zwingli — used it to draw a bright line between divine revelation and human invention. Scripture alone, they said, is the final, su...

  True Healing Through Christ — Recovering a Biblical View of Change Every counterfeit thrives by imitating something true.   Theophostic Prayer Ministry   (TPM) mimics Christianity’s promise of freedom and healing — but replaces the cross with psychology, and the Word with imagination. What began as a desire to help hurting believers ends up teaching them to search for Jesus in their memories instead of trusting Him by faith. The result is emotional experience without lasting transformation, therapy without theology. As Bob DeWaay observed after years of firsthand involvement in such ministries, “The people who were truly changed were those who were converted — not those who went through deliverance or inner-healing sessions.” That statement captures the heart of the issue: true healing comes not through mystical memory work, but through the gospel itself. Let’s look at what  biblical healing and transformation  actually mean — and how it differs radically from...

  How Theophostic Prayer Opens the Door to Subjectivism Every generation of Christians must guard against the same temptation: replacing the sure Word of God with personal experience. From the Garden of Eden, where Eve trusted the serpent’s words over God’s command, to the present, the human heart gravitates toward what   feels   true rather than what   is   true. Theophostic Prayer Ministry (TPM) is one of the clearest examples of that drift in today’s church. It invites believers to “go back” into painful memories, ask Jesus to “enter” the scene, and listen for whatever He might say or show. If a sense of peace follows, that experience is assumed to be divine truth. But as Bible teacher  Bob DeWaay  repeatedly warned, this method quietly transfers spiritual authority from the Scriptures to subjective experience. It trades the unshakable revelation of God’s Word for inner impressions, emotions, and mental imagery. Let’s unpack why that’s so spirituall...

  The Problem With “Lie-Based Woundedness” — Why Theophostic Prayer Ministry Misses the Gospel In recent decades,  Theophostic Prayer Ministry  (TPM) has gained popularity among Christians seeking emotional and spiritual healing. It promises deep freedom from inner pain through a process of identifying “lie-based woundedness” — false beliefs formed during traumatic memories — and asking Jesus to “replace the lie with truth.” It sounds compassionate and even Christ-centered. But beneath the language of “healing,” TPM rests on theological quicksand. It replaces biblical sanctification with a mystical psychology dressed in Christian vocabulary. The founder, Ed Smith, taught that people’s present emotional struggles are not caused primarily by sin, unbelief, or the flesh, but by  lies  they absorbed in painful memories. The goal of TPM is to recall those “first memory events,” ask Jesus to appear in the memory, and let Him speak truth to the wounded person’s heart. ...

In many Christian circles today, being “led by the Spirit” is often framed as a kind of mystical experience: a nudge, a whisper, a spontaneous inner prompting that gives divine insight into specific decisions—what house to buy, what job to take, who to marry, what to say in a conversation. While these moments may feel spiritual and meaningful, they can give the impression that being led by the Spirit means following a trail of personal revelations from heaven, like breadcrumbs guiding us through life. But the New Testament offers a far more grounded—and far more profound—understanding of what it means to be led by the Spirit. What Scripture Actually Says Two key passages are frequently quoted on this subject: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (Romans 8:14) “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” (Galatians 5:18) It’s telling that in both of these verses, Paul isn’t talking about guidance for personal decisions. He’s talking about the bat...