Communion
The Bible tells us that we need to take a good, long look at what is going on in our hearts when we partake in the Lord’s Supper. “Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup...
Praying Well
We may imagine it an easy thing to pray a simple prayer. But it turns out to be an incredible challenge to pray often and pray well. Even so, God calls his people to a kind of continual and thoughtful communication that saturates every...
Hard Work
The Bible has a lot to say about working hard, being disciplined, and fighting all slothful tendencies. The Christian work ethic we derive from the teaching of both the Old and New Testament leaves no room for leisurely lives...
Don’t Drift
Hebrews 2:1 tells us that “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” Much like a leisurely float down a meandering river, if we choose to relax in the Christian life we can be assured that the tide of our culture...
Four Things God Cannot Do
For years on playgrounds everywhere church kids have been stymied by the agitator’s questions, “Can God do anything? And if so, can he make a rock so big he can’t move it?” While children may struggle with the answer, I hope the rest of us do not...
Opportunities
Followers of Christ always need to be on the look out for opportunities to stand up for Christ and to speak up for his cause. And the more sinful the culture, the more critical it is that God’s people exploit...
Hard Truth
We all work to make our lives as comfortable and pain-free as possible. We buy all sorts of appliances and gadgets to make hard jobs easy, and seek out any available remedy to alleviate our bodily aches and pains. And this makes perfect sense. Only a masochist would...
God-Breathed
The Bible is a “God-breathed” book (2Tim.3:16)—which vividly depicts a set of written words that are so closely associated with the Author that they are to be pictured as though God himself were speaking them with the breath of his own mouth. As such, the written “word of God” is described...
Restoration
As we read through the Book of Jeremiah we are confronted with a very familiar refrain, “God would never do that!” This is what the Lord’s faithful spokesman encountered when he exposed the gaping distance between the standards God had commanded in his word, and the values...
Precarious Paths
In the model prayer that Jesus provided to guide us into the kinds of prayer concerns we ought to habitually bring before the Father, he included the request: “lead us not into temptation” (Mt.6:13). I would hope this recurring appeal for God to direct us around sinfully enticing...
Exclusivity
Many take offense at our call to trust Christ for the forgiveness of their sins because it is so exclusive. They stumble over the words of Jesus when he said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn.14:6). They despise the tone of our evangelism when it echoes...
Pleasing God First
The Bible often reminds us of the Christian calling to please those with whom we interact from day to day. Servants should please their masters (1Tim.6:1), children their parents (Col.3:20), citizens their governing authorities (Rom.13:1), parents should parent without exasperating their children (Eph.6:4), and the list goes...
Self-Serving
How are the decisions we make impacting those around us? Jesus said that we should seek to love others as we would love ourselves (Mt.22:39). Nothing could be more central to that command than for us to spend more time considering how our plans, actions, and words will either...
Well Wielded Words
At mealtime a parent may comfortably give their toddler a spoon, but never a knife. Eventually the child’s place setting will include one, but not until there is the maturity and self-control to safely employ its use. Perhaps this restrictive image is one we should recall when we consider God’s warning that “rash words are like...
Battlefield of the Mind
The progress in our sanctification is fought in the battlefield of our minds. Though the Bible often enlists the word “heart” for the “organ” we must guard so carefully (Pr.4:23), it is important to remember that this Hebrew analogy refers to the faculty of our thoughts, reason, imagination, intention, and contemplation. When God looked on the corrupt...
Exposing Anxiety
When God confronts the sin of anxiety in Philippians 4, his prescribed remedy helps to clearly diagnose the problem –…
Health
Good health is good. It is certainly preferable to sickness and disease. Occasionally you’ll find some concern for it in…
Anger
Anger is admittedly a volatile and dangerous emotion. But it is important to note that it is not always a sinful emotion, and it certainly isn’t always expressed in sinful ways. God gives us adequate warning that...
Superstitions
While Christians affirm that God is supernatural, we of all people should not be superstitious. Yes, we recognize that from time to time in biblical history God has spectacularly suspended natural law as a strategic way to display...
Sola Scriptura
Just before one of the strongest statements regarding the uniqueness and sufficiency of Scripture, the Bible warns us that as time marches on “evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse” (2Tim.3:13). The threat of “evil people” opposing the truth has...
Tolerance
We live in a society where the advocates of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant. We should be careful not to miss…
Exiles
“Exiles!” There’s a word that doesn’t feel good. Consider the ache and frustration of being trapped in a foreign land…
Outlook and Attitude
It doesn’t take long to discover that the Christian life is certainly not a continuous experience of fun and laughter.…
Repent
Like a lot of preachers, Amos confessed he had no aspirations of being one. He told his critics that he…
Perspective
Solomon’s refrain that everything the world has to offer is “utterly meaningless” (Eccl.1:2) becomes easier to affirm the older one gets. It seems that with increasing age comes the increasing realization that the world is truly a rip-off...
Suffering and Trust
If we read through the God-breathed songbook of Israel we’ll find plenty of psalms which remind us that in this life God’s favored people are in no way exempt from serious pain and intense suffering. It is how the psalmists’ deal with their pain...
Let There Be Light
Sometimes the important analogies presented in the Bible are so frequently echoed in our worship, our prayers, and even our conversations, that God’s intended meaning gets lost in our minds somewhere along the way. Consider the frequent...
Unbiblical Thoughts
To grow in our understanding of God and the Christian life requires that we leave behind wrong ideas about God and the Christian life...
Responding to Trials
Modern Christians tend to misplace a good portion of their compassion. Often when they learn of someone who is struggling or hurting, regardless of the reason, they are quick to offer...
Selfish Prayers
James 4:3 diagnoses one of the most insidious problems which always undermines, and often devastates our prayer lives. The problem we’re told, is...