When It Draws Us In
We must understand the gravity of our sinful plight to realize how gracious God is to draw us to himself through the means of his word.
sin
Relationship God’s Way
The newspaper recently reported that what people are looking for these days is a “spiritual” experience without any “religious” guidelines. That’s nothing new, so were Adam and Eve. We tend to want a relationship with God our way. The problem is “our way” is “sin” – which by definition is
Reliance on God
King Asa was a righteous leader of God’s people. This ancestor of Christ and third king of the divided kingdom was a devout reformer who abolished the worship of foreign gods, put an end to cultic prostitution, and even dethroned his family members who disdained obedience to Yahweh. The Bible says God brought…
Questions & Answers 2022-Part 3
Pastor Mike answers questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity. Questions in this session: Is it a sin for professing Christians to not read the Bible? Is belief in the sign gifts a secondary issue in the Christian life or is it salvific? How do we navigate friendship versus a dating relationship between Christian men …
Light
Jesus said that people prefer darkness rather than light because people don’t want their sinful deeds exposed (Jn.3:19-20). Of course this is an analogy. Your willingness to sit in the sun or your desire to dim the lights in the family room has nothing to do with…
Righteous Anger
While most Christians are chasing a modern fantasy of an irenic and affable day-to-day Christian experience, may we recognize the truth that we cannot be godly without regularly feeling and periodically expressing righteous anger…
A Private but Disruptive Sin
We must work to identify the sin of envy, longing with God’s empowerment to experience freedom from this insidious and corrosive problem.
Forgiveness
God’s forgiveness is complete. Because God is too pure to approve or tolerate what is evil (Hab.1:13; Ps.5:4-5; et al.), to say that we are God’s beloved children because we are accepted by God in Christ, is to make a gigantic claim that assumes that our…
Our Sin
The Bible says we are all born with a built in double standard – the one we apply to those around us and the other we apply to ourselves. We are innately proficient in detecting the sins and transgressions of others, but we are inept in perceiving our own. Consider the freeway foibles…
Get Wisdom
The Bible repeatedly tells us that God’s wisdom is readily available to us and would enhance our lives in countless ways, including the expansion of our lot in eternity, but sadly we choose to leave much of it unclaimed. The diagnosis? We love our sin way too much. We’re told that…
Prepared for Eternity
We are motivated to boldly proclaim the gospel when we understand the horrendous problem of sin and death, prizing the gracious forgiveness God made possible through the risen Christ.
Grace
God’s grace is the theme of the New Testament and yet with all this scriptural emphasis it seems we are still slow to rightly understand it. We either tend to think that it is some kind of extra credit that adds to our goodness, thus making us acceptable to God. Or we secretly tend to believe it is a “get out of jail free” card that allows us to dabble in sin without consequences. Both are obviously a…
The Fall-Broken World
This is a set of messages delivered to the high school group True North at the Revival 2021 summer camp.
Question & Answer Service 2021-Part 3
Pastor Mike answers questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity. Questions in this session: 1. How do you transition from knowing about God to knowing God? 2. What is the best way to help people find the right path to live a life God wants them to live. (My paraphrase) 3. What is the best …
Question & Answer Service 2021-Part 1
Pastor Mike answers questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity. Questions in this session: 1. Question on same sex attraction. 2. Do all pastors at Compass agree to all 5 points of grace. 3. Question related to understanding the differences between dispensational and Covenantal theologies and can they be reconciled. 4. How does a woman …
Saul: Fighting God
To fully appreciate the grace of Christian regeneration we need to recall the futility and plight of our pre-Christian rebellion against God.
Sickness and Sin
Clearly not every health crisis or sickness is a result of someone’s specific sin (cf. Jn.9:1-3; Job 1:1; et al.). On the other hand, sometimes they are. According to Hebrews 12, God’s protective and parental love is demonstrated…
The Challenges of Discipleship
As we advance the gospel, we must be ready to faithfully confront and correct those we lead to Christ, knowing that everyone will be tempted to fall into costly and corrupting sins.
Suffering and God’s Plan
So often we are surprised that God “would allow” suffering, pain and death. But actually, these unpleasant realities are the promised outworking of God’s response to sin in Genesis 3. Our Creator has clearly and consistently maintained that the wages of sin is death – and all the painful
The Pushback Against the Messengers
We shouldn’t be surprised at pushback from people when we faithfully deliver the gospel, because God always uses it for the unpleasant work of exposing sin and guilt before he uses it to save.
The Paganism of the People
It is always more costly than we think to follow our wayward enticements, and to turn away from obedience to Christ’s life-giving words.
A Disconnect
Many say they love God, and yet are seemingly indifferent about the departure from and rebellion against the principles and precepts of God’s word that we see all around us. “To each his own,” “Live and let live,” “We can’t cram our convictions down other people’s throats,” you’ll hear them say. And yet the claim of sincere love coexisting with complete indifference toward mutiny against someone would be an unthinkable pairing in any other arena of life. If you sincerely love your wife…
Calling for Repentance
We, like Peter, must proclaim the offer of forgiveness in Christ by calling people to repentance and the hope of a promised future inheritance in God’s coming kingdom.
Telling the Truth
We must be careful in our evangelism to be painfully honest about the universal problem of human rebellion against God always keeping the focus on Christ and his power and not ourselves.
Proclaiming Christ’s Power
We must be more attuned to the effects of sin in our world and boldly proclaim the power of a Savior who will not only instantaneously forgive our transgressions, but will one day reverse all the systemic consequences of sin.
Evil in the World Cont’d
If God is a good and loving God, why is there evil, pain and suffering in the world?
Evil in the World
If God is a good and loving God, why is there evil, pain and suffering in the world?
Did the Resurrection Happen?
How can we trust that the resurrection really happened and what does that mean to the biblical message of salvation?
