Saying that Jesus is Lord, implies surrendering to His will over ours. No matter how you frame it, surrender is frightening. When we surrender, we are vulnerable. When we surrender someone else determines our path and can take us where we do not want to go. Jesus...
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...
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...
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...
Is it possible to know you have a new life through Christ and are headed for heaven? If so, how? God never intends for the assurance of your salvation to be a perpetual guessing game. You can know you’re saved. Unfortunately, you can lose your grip on the assurance of...
"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...
"Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “ ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” Whenever the living creatures give...
Songs are powerful things. The combine melody and harmony. They express both truth and emotion. They can fill us with joy and hope or with lament and sorrow. Through the beauty of song we worship, we celebrate, and we mourn. In the Psalms, the worship songs of the...
“At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthami?’ (which means, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’). Mark 15:33-34 OBSERVE After three...
We’ve all had parents. They’re responsible for at least some part of shaping how we got to where we are today. And our different kinds of experiences with parents have affected our thoughts on parenting. But what if we could broaden our idea of what it means to be a...
God created the world and everything in it.Jesus told the men on the road after he rose again. We do not know what they spoke about but maybe He explained how God created the world and everything in it. Maybe He explained that all of us have done wrong things and our...
Jesus is the example.Jesus is the very BEST example of humility. He gave up everything to come to earth and save us! After Jesus died and came to life again, people talked about what He did. They talked about the way He treated people—with love and compassion. They...
It Cost Jesus Everything It cost Jesus EVERYTHING to put us first. Jesus died so He could pay the price for our sins—so we could be forgiven. It was the only way we could have a relationship with God. And because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can have a...
The last week of Jesus’ life began with a parade of celebration and hope. He would be dead by the end of that week. What happened? Even in darkness, God is at work; it just doesn’t feel like it sometimes. And even though there is no darkness in God, He’s never opposed...
Jesus put Others First When Jesus was in the garden praying, He was talking to His Father. Jesus asked if there could be another way to complete His mission. But in the end, Jesus chose to do what He had come to do because it was part of God’s bigger plan. Jesus...
ASL Interpretation - Message OnlyThe last week of Jesus’ life began with a parade of celebration and hope. He would be dead by the end of that week. What happened? Even in darkness, God is at work; it just doesn’t feel like it sometimes. And even though there is no...
The Road to Easter runs the entire length of the Bible. The whole of scripture is the unfolding story of the Father’s plan to redeem the world through the death and resurrection of His beloved Son. As with all roads, the destination is harder to see when the journey...
The Epistles make up over two-thirds of the entire New Testament (21 of the 27 books) and were written by Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude, with the majority being Paul’s. The value of the Epistles to the church cannot be overestimated. These books unpack and...
Each year Easter is celebrated all over the world in all kinds of cultures. Some celebrate out of tradition or even religious ritual. Others consider the Easter Bunny to be the center-stage character in the Easter story. But of course, Easter is the celebration of the...