“You need to present your body. You are a whole person, your body and soul knit carefully together. As we saw in Romans 12, you are to surrender to God all that you are, holding nothing back. Your body belongs to God and is to be used for his purposes. Thus, God calls you to... Continue Reading

I suspect that many people who sit week after week in the pews of their particular church have no idea how difficult a Sunday is for a minister and his family. Pray for your pastor’s Sundays. Robert Murray M’Cheyne says: “A well-spent sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth. … We... Continue Reading

“How will you respond? Your exegetically and theologically trained mind immediately populates a list of problems with her use of this verse: this is a horrible translation of the Bible; this verse is taken out of context; this is a word spoken to the nation of Israel in the Old Covenant and therefore can’t apply... Continue Reading

“If you and I are at all serious about personal holiness, we’ll need to look under the hood of our hearts and try to figure out why we do what we do and then have the wisdom and courage to do something about it.  I think two of the most spiritually crippling words for followers... Continue Reading

“There is no place among the followers of Jesus for violence or harsh words, for sexual manipulation, for financial leverage or for making threats. Blaming tiredness or stress, or alcohol and drugs doesn’t cut it. These things are symptoms of a deeper issue in your heart.”   Author’s note: If you are in an abusive... Continue Reading

“Vacation should allow us time to restore relationships to maximum health. With God. With family. With ourself. The busyness of life can strain relationships. Vacation gives you the opportunity to pause and get back to optimum health with the most important relationships in our life.”   I will never forget a sobering question I received... Continue Reading

“Is there (or should there be) a palpable difference between the aesthetics of worship and other opportunities for singing together? Does the context of a coffee house, campfire, concert hall, stadium, living room, or sanctuary change our expectations and practice of making music?”   In my last post, I set out a series of questions–including... Continue Reading

“They say marriage teaches you more about selflessness than you ever wanted to know. I have definitely found that phrase to be true in my relationship with my husband. Because at the heart of it, real love is all about sacrifice. About the giving of yourself, in ways big and small.”   Did you ever... Continue Reading

“What you do before a Sunday morning ever begins, for the most part, determines what happens on a Sunday morning. Chances are you’ve struggled through the mistakes below. I have. And what’s hard for preachers is that we always make our mistakes in public.”   So maybe you’re a preacher, or you listen to preachers... Continue Reading

“When we approach the subject of leaving our children a spiritual inheritance, we should be asking ourselves a series of diagnostic questions. These are only a few of the questions that we should be asking ourselves as we evaluate what sort of inheritance we are preparing for our children.”   When I was a teenager,... Continue Reading