When Does Love Insist On Its Way?
Joy-producing self-denial (Acts 20:35), which is the common element in all the wonderful descriptions of what love is and isn’t in 1 Corinthians 13:4–7, is the “more excellent way.”
Paul believed love — love for Gentile and Jewish believers, love for Peter and Barnabas, love for the local Galatian church as well as the universal Christian church, and love for Christ and his gospel — required that he insist that Peter, who “though a Jew, live[d] like a Gentile and not like a Jew,... Continue Reading
A Fruitful Life
He knows the heart and exercises His workmanship of grace in those He has united to Christ by His Spirit in their effectual calling.
Jesus emphasizes three characteristics of the fruit associated with life in Him. One, it is authentic. It organically proceeds from union with Him. It is not of our own stark effort, yielding artificial fruit that looks real but is not. Two, it is abundant. Jesus says, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear... Continue Reading
Prayerlessness About Bible Study Reveals Our False Beliefs
If we don’t pray when we open God’s word, we don’t believe God can use it to change us.
The essential truths of the Scriptures are plain, but we often treat the Bible as a grade school grammar book. We give it ten minutes of our attention and try to harvest a lesson for the day. If this book really is God’s word, and if we really have an invitation to the depths of God’s... Continue Reading
Lord, Lift Up Your Feet!
Strange children, these: They do not even want to be rescued. But their Father loves them nonetheless.
What a desolation was wrought in Eden! Would that only our ligaments were twisted and torn, and not the very fabric of our being! Man, by nature, is now detached, defiled, and dead in trespasses and sins. And unless the Lord lifts up his feet and runs to him, he will stay that way. But thanks... Continue Reading
The Horizontal in Worship
From the beginning of the service to the end and beyond, the vertical blessing of our triune God flows down and spreads through the entire body of Christ.
Setting our minds on things above, and not on earthly things, does not mean we are to ignore the others around us who are worshiping with us. In worship, we are not only to fulfill the great commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are also to love our... Continue Reading
It’s OK to Disagree Sometimes
The question is not whether we agree, it is how we deal with it.
The fact is, disagreement is often a good thing. Not overt division and infighting, but disagreement. I am painfully aware that if I got my way on every stupid and ill thought through idea I ever had, I would either burn out, get the sack or have no church left! I need other people around... Continue Reading
Stand in the Day of Trouble
How shall we live in a world that is becoming irrational and instinctual literally day by day?
To stand in the Biblical sense of the word means to hold fast to what we believe in the face of opposition. We must be resolute. This also means that due to our convictions there will be things that we must not do and things that we must do. These things will no doubt put... Continue Reading
Beauty’s Difficulties: A Case of Mistaken Identity
Beauty is confused with at least four things, which compromise its true meaning.
Sentimental art appeals to human vanity, self-centredness, and egotism. Kitsch is where humans go to indulge the love of self, and to escape into worlds of their own making. Kitsch trades in the familiar, the easy, the shallow, and the childish, because these appeal to what is most selfish in all. The topic of... Continue Reading
Drop a Stone in Their Shoe: How to Talk About Jesus
"Be content to plant a seed that might later flourish under God’s sovereign care.”
Each person we see, day by day, represents a soul that will spend all of eternity in Heaven or Hell; and I have grown way too comfortable putting my head down, “minding my own business,” and thinking it is someone else’s job to reach that particular soul with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. ... Continue Reading
Teaching Church History to Children
The past must be approached with curiosity, empathy, and eagerness to learn.
Those who think an honest look at our messy church history, with all its conflicts, disagreements, and outright misconducts, might be discouraging to our children need to think again. The reason why the Bible is such a comforting book in spite of all the messiness it reveals is that it keeps bringing us back to... Continue Reading