WEEK ONE Songs of Praise Majestic. Glorious. Excellent. Perfect. True. Gracious. Merciful. Awesome. The Psalms of Praise help put into God’s greatness into words. This week as you read through these songs that worship God for who He is, may you be filled with awe 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...
Everywhere we look, we are confronted with messages telling us about the things we need to be happy and whole. If only we can get, the better phone, go on the better vacation, drive the better car, get into the better college, then we will be content. We will be...
We are created to crave. We all want something. And we all realize that there’s something lacking in our lives, so we always want more. More food, more time, more money, more stuff. But with all of our desire for more, our ability to get more is always limited. So we...
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...
The words “fear of the Lord” appear over one hundred times in the Bible. But throughout scripture, God also tells his people not to fear. Is God contradicting Himself, or could the fear of the Lord mean something completely different than fear? As we discuss the...
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,...
The arrival of God to earth could have been the most extravagant welcome ever seen—an all-out effort for an over-the-top celebration. But it didn’t happen that way. A few private announcements confirmed the arrival of Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah. But the Savior’s...
The love of material things often steals our attention. This leads us to focus on growing our collection of possessions, even thinking that those items can somehow provide authentic, deep life satisfaction. And when our idea of Christmas revolves around a misplaced...
We generally associate Christmas as being a season of joy and celebration, but many of us experience deep feelings of grief and loneliness during Christmas. That grief and loneliness grows as we tell ourselves we should be feeling positive emotions instead. If that’s...
The story of that very first Christmas includes chilling words for any family trying to deliver a baby: “There’s no room for you.” Truth is, that’s not the last time that sentiment would be spoken in Jesus’ direction. Life wants to crowd out Jesus. The pace. The...
In the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul says that believers in Jesus are being built together into a holy temple in which God’s Spirit dwells. It’s a beautiful picture of unity and of believers bound together in peace. However, that...
Jesus is distinct from any other political leader. He is God in the flesh. He is a coming King. He will bring earthly powers into account. He will win the final victory. It’s not unusual these days to hear people ask, “Is this the end times.” Maybe. God tells us what...
More than almost anything else, Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God and that it was now available to everyone. He explained that those who trust Him become citizens of that Kingdom. Jesus also compared the Kingdom to a great treasure that someone would sell all they...
The kingdoms and empires of this world are small compared to God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is active now. It sometimes operates in obscurity and ordinariness. It is unseen but real nonetheless. And God invites us to participate in this kingdom—to make seeking His...
It seems clear that Jesus wants to shape culture. To ultimately transform the conscience and morality of a people. His disciples anticipated that Jesus was about to establish a political machine capable of toppling the Roman Empire. But that’s not what Jesus did. The...
Becoming a Christian and living as one are two different things. God refers to one as justification and the other as sanctification. We might also understand these two distinctions as finding Jesus and following Jesus. Blur this distinction between salvation and...
Salvation is often viewed as a singular “event” or moment in our lives. By God’s grace, we receive salvation by believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus to save us. There is a sense in which this is absolutely true, from the moment of belief we are saved...
You’re born into God’s family the moment you place your faith in Jesus for eternal life. You start as a spiritual baby. But it’s never God’s intention for you to remain a baby. You are to grow and thrive as a maturing believer in Jesus. But you never grow passively....
Have you ever felt unprepared? You’ve probably had a time in your life when you were not prepared at all for what was about to happen. As our flesh constantly fights to lead us further away from God, it’s easy for us to feel unprepared for life. But God prepares us by...
In the Bible, we read Jesus promising to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after He is gone. As believers in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is also with us, living inside of us, just as Jesus promised. The question is, why did Jesus send the Holy Spirit to be with us?...