Todd Wilson

Approaching God Daniel 9 gives us a surprising answer to a deeply practical question: How do you approach God when you’ve blown it badly? Not when things are going well. Not when your conscience is clean. But when you know you have sinned, perhaps in ways that feel irreversible. When you have no case to make for yourself. When you feel like the worst saint who ever lived. Daniel 9 is a prayer of confession and a plea for mercy. Israel is in exile because of persistent, covenant-breaking sin.

I invite you now to come with me into the very center of the Christian faith. And I invite you to do so through a text of Scripture with which you are, no doubt, very familiar. Just before my family and I left the Philippines and returned to the United States, this text opened up for me in an explosive way. I had, by that time, studied and taught it for nearly 20 years. But it was not until November of 1988 that the text's fundamental affirmation finally opened up to me.

Introduction I am surprised Peter includes this word to husbands. Not that husbands don’t need a word like this. God knows we do! Peter knew we did as well, because Peter himself was married (1 Cor. 9:5), and therefore knew as well as anyone that husbands really need this kind of word. I am surprised Peter includes this word to husbands because it does not fit the pattern of this passage; it’s not what we would expect from the flow of the passage.