Is your heart troubled? Are you feeling like the psalmist, who asked his own soul, “Why are you in despair? And why have you become disturbed within me?” One of the hardest parts of knowing peace is understanding how it has nothing to do with control. If you’re having trouble with trust or finding the …
The soul is measured by its flights, Some low and others high. The heart is known by its delights, And pleasures never lie. (The Pleasures of God, 4) “Pleasures never lie” doesn’t mean the things we find pleasurable are never deceitful. Many are (Hebrews 11:25), as we all know by lots of personal experience. Rather, …
Waiting on God is difficult. No matter how many times we are asked to wait on Him, it never gets easier. But the best we can do is train ourselves to wait in faith that God is at work, and to wait actively on His behalf, storming the gates of heaven with our requests and …
Ask ten different Christians to define discernment and you’ll likely get ten different answers. For some, discernment is the ability to uncover scandal or spot doctrinal error, the stuff of church members who stand ready with a critique of the pastor’s sermon. For others, discernment is a kind of sixth sense, a gut instinct that …
1. Prayer to God for Forgiveness of Sins Even while we encourage you to pray this prayer, but saying words alone will not save you. Prayer doesn’t save. Only Christ can save. But prayer can be a means of reaching out to the Lord in true saving faith. If you pray these words in faith, …
Many religious people in the world believe God is absolutely sovereign over all things — that he controls the course of history and governs the lives of individuals. Most Muslims believe this, and many Christians. And many Christians believe that people without faith in Jesus Christ are without salvation, and they feel compassion for them. …
Prayer can be difficult. As one theologian of the past said, “There are times in my life I’d rather die than pray.” When it comes to communion with God through prayer, we often need all the help we can get. One way for us to find some success in our prayer life is to consider …
Weak, low, despised and unlikely are essential qualities God looks for in his servants, and he chooses these qualities with great intentionality (1 Corinthians 1:27–29). Don’t believe me? Look at the odd list of qualifications God gave for incredibly important positions in history: The Father (and Mother) of God’s Covenant People: married couple; must be …
We took a knee. John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” or Alabama’s “Cheap Seats” would be playing over the loudspeakers. The crowd was settling into the bleachers. The infielders had finished up the final round of pregame grounders. The whole team sprinted to a spot in foul ground about thirty feet from the base, and kneeled to hear …
It is a strange quirk of the contemporary church that arguably the most common way of handling the charismatic gifts, at least in the West, is the only one that simply cannot be defended from Scripture. For now, let’s leave aside the question of whether the distinction between “miraculous” and “other” gifts would have occurred …
