While biblically minded Christians confess this in theory, do they always embody it in practice? In reality, we can unintentionally fall into the same error as Marcion by functionally “taking away” from the words of Scripture. How so? By habitually focusing on only certain parts of the Bible and ignoring others. When we regularly skip... Continue Reading

What would keep you from despair in this kind of worst-case scenario? What prevented the Stams and the Scotts from losing their faith in God? Still reeling from the news of their children’s barbaric deaths, these grieving parents left a written record of three truths that kept them from despair.   In the past few... Continue Reading

God created us with emotions because He delights in our worshipful appreciation of the beauty of who He is and how He will redeem. This means that, in the end, every emotion, even every dark one, is an opportunity to engage with Him and “pour out [our] heart[s] before him” as our act of trust (Ps. 62:8). He... Continue Reading

So in one sense, mercy is not getting what we deserve, as our penalty was paid for by another. But it is so much more. The children of Israel came to a designated place once-a-year through an intermediary. We come to a person. Our mercy seat is Jesus Christ. He has opened the way for permanent and eternal... Continue Reading

If Jesus only had the goal of inspiring human kindness, no one would have responded with resentment to Lazarus’ resurrection. But some did. They understand what the the resurrection of Lazarus meant. It meant, as Jesus had been teaching, that man’s only hope to escape the clutches of everlasting death was faith in Christ Himself.... Continue Reading

Jesus also endured through love. How could he stay on that cross? People were shouting for Him to come down. What made Him stay there? “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for His friends” (John 15:13). Christ persevered through faith and He endured through love. When others see... Continue Reading

The faithless want to live life not on God’s terms, but on their own terms, in pursuit of rights, privileges, and “cancel culture.” David reminds every one of us: on the authority of God’s written word, heed His warnings of wrath, embrace His promises of pardon. Wise up, repent, and take refuge in God’s Anointed... Continue Reading

There is something that unifies each church.  That something should be Jesus, of course, but there is usually also something else.  And that something else will always try to displace our first union with Christ, becoming – in the words of Paul from the book of Galatians – another gospel instead.  If our first union... Continue Reading

Postman’s analysis of technology is prophetic and profound. He warned of the trivializing of our media, defined by “broken time and broken attention,” in which “facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.” He warned of “a neighborhood of strangers and pointless quantity.” That’s a... Continue Reading

The cultivation of God’s good gifts whether through art, agriculture, horticulture, and much else then allow us to experience God’s goodness in creation. These experiences terminate in proximate ends since God will recreate the cosmos. Yet just as supporting our family today matters, even though we are adopted into the family of God, so cultivating creation... Continue Reading