Do you believe it’s possible for God to delight in you? That he loves you? That he takes joy in you? That he treasures you? Many people say, “Not me”…
Life is filled with riddles and illusions. We’re often surrounded by mysteries and conundrums. We can’t always figure out what’s going on around us or why things happen the way…
It’s easy to overlook the fact that God entered the human race through a descendant of slaves. Every slave who has ever lived, then—whether in physical shackles or some other…
Verse 2 of “O Holy Night” contains these two lines: “In all our trials born to be our Friend! / He knows our need—to our weakness is no stranger.” These…
Do you feel valuable? Significant? Important? Not in the sense of an over inflated ego or an attitude of superiority toward others—but in the sense that you matter, that your…
The hauntingly tender Christmas carol “O Holy Night” has a strange and fascinating history. Indeed, the version we have in our hymnbooks today was the result of a joint effort…
After the near “food fight” we saw during the last meal Jesus attended at the home of a prominent religious leader, another Pharisee is brave enough to have Jesus over…
The problem with legalism is that it doesn’t feel like sin. It feels like holiness. It feels like true commitment and genuine devotion. It feels like something God should be pleased with.…
We might have expected that with Jesus in their midst, Mary and Martha would have been able to contain their spat with each other, but they don’t. In fact, it’s…
If you’ve ever given a significant amount of your time and energy to serve the Lord and help his church accomplish its mission, then maybe you’ve wondered on occasion if…
At some point in our lives, we’ll probably be scandalized by the behavior of someone else—maybe even a fellow believer. What then? Tim Chester has said, “When you discover that…
Fill in the blank: “The Son of Man came __________.” How would you respond? Teaching and preaching? Healing and forgiving? Loving and restoring? Dying and rising? All good answers, but…
If you were looking for a new church home, what would you be looking for? What would be the criteria by which you make your selection? Size? Location? Style of…
After winning the gold medal in the women’s tennis event at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Serena Williams told a reporter, “I didn’t think it could be better than…
Scattered throughout the New Testament are words, phrases, and illustrations that give the church a military flavor. In Philippians 2, for example, Paul speaks of “Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker…
There once was a church that was totally centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Above the entrance to their meeting place hung a sign that read, “We Preach Christ…
The word “saint” (Eph 3:18) is a descriptive noun for the people of God in both the Old and New Testaments. The root of the word is “holy,” which means…
The most prominent image for the church in the New Testament is “the Body of Christ.” There are about 15 references to it from Matthew to Revelation. The image implies…
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