Identity
Finding Your Confidence

Finding Your Confidence

So many factors conspire against our living in a way that pleases God. We not only deal with our inner struggles, but we must also face people who sound well-intentioned but oppose the ways of God. We can unwittingly embrace a conspiracy of confidence in our...

Caring for the Neglected Places in Your Soul

Caring for the Neglected Places in Your Soul

One of the age old practices in our culture is that of presenting who we are as our vocation. We present our occupation title as a means to inform our new acquaintance of our function. In essence, we unknowingly begin to associate our vocations or contribution to...

Surrendering the Self Life

Surrendering the Self Life

Over time, almost imperceptibly, we can get stuck in the trance of constructing our role in the world, building our identity, and completely miss what God is doing around us. We can spend a lot of time and energy protecting this Self we’ve created at all costs. As...

The Secret to Learning God’s Secrets

The Secret to Learning God’s Secrets

Sometimes God keeps secrets and sometimes He likes to reveal them. Regardless of the outcome, one thing is always true: God’s thoughts and ways are bigger and higher than our own. And He has a right to keep or disclose secrets as He chooses. But can we get to a place...

Resistance Training

Resistance Training

Our muscles grow stronger when we repeatedly push against a weight or force. Similarly, as followers of Jesus, we can grow spiritually stronger when we encounter resistance. Today, we’ll identify the three primary forces that push against us on our path towards...

Courageous Authenticity

Courageous Authenticity

We may have several roles we play in society: as a spouse, a parent, or a co-worker, to name a few. At the same time, there are cultural standards for what it means to be “good” at the various roles we find ourselves in. But these cultural standards are sometimes in...

New Life in Jesus Christ

New Life in Jesus Christ

Practical Christian living is built on the foundation of theological truth. Because we know that Jesus was raised from the dead, our identification with Him becomes real. This should lead us to see things from God’s perspective and to put His priorities for us into...

Count Me In

Count Me In

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...

A Brand New Day

A Brand New Day

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...

Knowing Yourself and Your God

Knowing Yourself and Your 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...

The New You

The New You

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...

The Glory of God

The Glory of God

The glory of God can seem like a confusing idea. The Bible makes a big deal of it, even making it a matter of life and death. But we tend not to think about it very much. What exactly is God’s glory? What if understanding and seeking God’s glory dramatically changes...

Bought with a Price

Bought with a Price

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...

Your Old and New Natures

Your Old and New Natures

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...

Confessing Your Sins

Confessing Your Sins

God’s redemptive plan for humanity involves the death of Jesus for the sins of everyone. But we enjoy God’s forgiveness only when we believe what Jesus did for us. Have you noticed, even Christians still sin? Confessing or admitting our daily sin keeps our...

A New Creation

A New Creation

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." 2 Corinthians 5:17 OBSERVATION The Church of Corinth had issues. Paul's writing here is to address just one of the many challenges facing...

Here I am, Send Me – Who Will Go?

Here I am, Send Me – Who Will Go?

"Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs form the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: "Behold, this has touched our lips; Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged." Also I heard the...

Here I Am, Send Me – I saw The Lord

Here I Am, Send Me – I saw The Lord

"... I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one with six wings: with two they covered their face, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And they cried to one another and said:...

New Creation

New Creation

It’s easy for us to become consumed with what happens to us and around us. We spend so much time and energy on managing our circumstances that we begin to think those circumstances define us. After thinking this way for a while, we eventually believe that those old...