Zion, the City of God
The climax of God’s redemptive plan centers on the coming together of heaven and earth.
The expectation of a future city of God runs throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. According to Hebrews, the patriarch Abraham looked forward to “the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10, NIV). The expectation of a transformed Jerusalem is a dominant theme in the oracles of the Old Testament... Continue Reading
Why a Consumer Mentality Doesn’t Work at Church
We have the supernatural gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ at work in our hearts.
I think consumerism particularly bites hard against God’s plan for a church made of people who share little in common other than Jesus Christ. The fact is that we have the gospel at work in our lives, and we want to show it off. It’s like you have the special edition Camaro. You don’t want... Continue Reading
Reflections on Forty Years of Being Born Again
God’s chastening is always good for me, though I am sometimes a slow learner.
God employs loss and its accompanying grief to strip me of inferior objects of trust and sources of joy and anchor my soul more securely to Christ. Fear is a powerful enemy and an opponent of childlike faith. Suffering is the most powerful instrument of the Spirit for exposing my heart’s sin and false trust.... Continue Reading
How Intellectuals Found God
Almost 150 years after Nietzsche said ‘God is dead,’ some of our most important thinkers are getting religion. Peter Savodnik meets the new theists.
For two decades, Jordan Hall, 52, had been on this hypercharged, neon-lit journey through the whirlwind of Web 1.0: Burning Man, Big Sur, Aspen, private islands, cross-country RV treks, the jungles of southern Ecuador. Then, in 2022, Hall and his then-girlfriend Vanessa arrived in the green, rambling, rolling Blue Ridge Mountains of westernmost North Carolina.... Continue Reading
How Did We Get Here (Part Two)
The problem for the church is not a culture to be fixed with a different moral ordering, but a spiritual problem of men and women in need of reconciliation to God.
Looking and sounding like the world mutes the true spiritual difference between the world and the Christian message. The entire progressive project is an attempt to create an ethos within the church to address the problem of church attendance as if that was the first concern of the church. Now the music, the message, the... Continue Reading
2024 Year in Review: The Top 40 Christian Headlines (Part 1)
The United Methodist Church overturns its ban on LGBTQ clergy.
The UMC now joins the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Church of Christ as being among those to ordain gay clergy. Christ has removed his lamp stand from these churches (Revelation 2:5), and the Holy Spirit is not there. Interestingly enough, the liberal African Methodist... Continue Reading
Notable Deaths of Church and Ministry Leaders in 2024
Morgan authored books and articles on leadership and served a combined total of 14 years on the senior leadership teams of three large churches.
Tony Morgan died Sept. 4 following complications from a heart attack. Morgan was founder of the Unstuck Group, a church consultancy firm that “helps pastors clarify where God’s called the church to go in the future, and how you’ll get there.” Since its founding in 2009, the organization claims to have “helped over 600 churches... Continue Reading
How Do I Live Through a Season of Darkness?
We must wait for the Lord, cry to him, and know that our own self-indictment, rendered in the darkness, is not as sure as God’s word spoken in the light.
We can draw no deadlines for God. He hastens or he delays as he sees fit. And his timing is all-loving toward his children. Oh, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness. Darkness Is Normal It will be of great advantage to the struggling Christian to remember that seasons of... Continue Reading
The Word and Prayer
The word of God not only rouses our souls by the adrenaline of praise, it nourishes our beings for the conduct of life.
The truth of God’s Word will sink deep into our beings, assimilated by the digestive juices of prayer to our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Our very beings are affected, sustained, fortified, and changed. By the Spirit, that embraced Word will accomplish the purpose intended for us in it. Prayer in Nehemiah (15) “And... Continue Reading
Don’t Be a Partial Christian
Partial Bible makes only a partial Christian.
Few dare to plunge into the unusual laws and regulations of Leviticus, the troubling histories of Judges, the long prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel. Yet if each of these books is from God and ultimately about God, then each book teaches us how we can best honor God. The Bible is a canon, an authoritative... Continue Reading