It’s one thing for you to evaluate your own spiritual progress. It’s another thing altogether to have Jesus give His critique of how you’re doing. Sometimes the truth hurts. If Jesus were to write a letter to you about what He thinks of your devotion to Him, what...
It shouldn’t surprise us that through the centuries, superstitions arise and thrive even among well-meaning church people. Most of these superstitions are based on a desire for a kind of good luck charm in a life filled with uncertainty and hardship. Even the practice...
While God never changes in His nature, He does change the way He works with human beings. Jesus announced a significant change when He held up a cup and identified it with His blood that would establish a new covenant. After being raised from the dead, Jesus told His...
The church can be described as a body, a family, an army. It’s a movement of influence—one that seeks to bring glory to God and point people toward the Savior. On the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He initiated the movement with a meal. He chose food and drink...
It might seem natural to equate spiritual health with an absence of weakness and vulnerability. Maybe it’s exactly the opposite. Sometimes power and strength are found where we least expect them. Could it be that running from weakness is actually a weakness? We become...
Our past marks us. Those experiences go into making us the people we are. But some of those experiences we would rather forget. Guilt, shame, and regret can carve deep gashes in our souls—permanent reminders of another life we would prefer to leave behind. But God...
Getting to know God ranks high on the list of life’s most meaningful quests. God has revealed Himself to us. He is knowable. And we can grow to know Him in deeper and deeper ways. But our knowledge of God is always connected to the knowledge of ourselves. As we get to...
To be spiritually healthy is to be thriving in your desire to pursue Jesus and walking in the strength of the Holy Spirit. But spiritual health is tricky. We might be so obsessed with looking good outwardly that we fail to pay attention to what’s going on inside us....
Seems like there’s plenty to be upset about in our world. We can even get personally offended by the actions and comments of others around us. Here’s a radical, relational idea: What if you can become unoffendable? That’s right—unoffendable. It’s rare but possible....
Finding the will of God is both a mystery and an adventure. Certainly, we would be short-sighted if we didn’t curiously and diligently pursue the path God wants us to walk. If Jesus is our Lord, it makes sense for us to do what He wants us to do. Can we know what He...
Temptation is real. And so is the danger of making sinful choices that displease the Lord of our lives. Fortunately for our sakes, others before us have made unfortunate choices that we can learn from. While the Bible is filled with examples of success, it is just as...
If we grudgingly view Christ’s lordship in our lives as a threat to our freedom, we don’t understand the real freedom we’ve been given through Him. Jesus has come to make us new, literally! Through the new birth, we’ve been given a new nature and the cord to sin and...
No one makes Christ Lord; He is Lord. So, it goes without saying that His lordship extends over the life of every person. Whether or not we acknowledge His lordship is another matter altogether. The price paid for the sins of all was a high price indeed—the death of...
Every person in every church and every pastor should never forget a singular, irreplaceable truth: Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is first in everything. Get that priority confused and you invite the disintegration of what’s most important usually replaced by...
No other event is more central to our finding and following Jesus than His resurrection. Without it, the Christian faith is just wishful thinking. But if Christ is raised from the dead, that changes everything. Because Jesus lives so can you! You can be raised to a...
You may not be a prophet like Jonah, but there are times when God wants you to do something you should not ignore. You can respond in obedience. Or you can run. Running from God is never a very good option. You may not get swallowed by a giant fish, but you will be...
Ever felt like God was far away, uninterested, or worse yet, that He had abandoned you? You’re not alone. In Psalm 13, David expresses the raw emotion of wondering where God is when he needs Him the most. Far from being unspiritual, cries of lament create a dialogue...
God invites us to authentically express what we’re feeling when we ponder life’s realities. Many of these expressions are recorded for us in the Psalms—the songbook of the Bible. Psalm 8 is a Psalm of praise. In it, David encourages us to instinctively look up and...
Money can activate either greed or generosity within us. When God urges us to share our financial resources for the good of others, He doesn’t do so by appealing to guilt or obligation. God tells us that we can invest in things that really matter by sharing the money...
Money is strange. You need it to live, yet it can squeeze the life right out of you. We shouldn’t find it surprising that God has a lot to say about money and our possessions. Far from being an off-limits conversation even in the church, your view of money reveals...
With photography, as an illustration, discover the power of seeing the light. God reminds us that “light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” Discover how you can see the light in your own life. Pick up a camera if you’re so inclined, but,...