Jesus, Continued…

How about you? Has the mission of God translated into a specific vision for your life? Do you, like Paul, have a personal ministry ambition? Through his Spirit, God invites you to join the purposes for which he has created you specifically (Eph. 2:10). When you grasp this, the Great Commission becomes a focused burden for some person or group of pe

I’m not sure what image comes to your mind when you hear the word church, but it’s probably a good ways off from how those first apostles understood it on the day of Pentecost. The apostles understood the church to be a movement birthed by the mighty, rushing wind of the Spirit of God. Is that how you see your church? Most people today see the chur

I’ve had to learn this the hard way. As I noted earlier, I have spent most of my life feeling guilty about what I was not doing, rather than feeling grateful and joyful in doing what God had told me to do. But as I have begun to discover what it means to walk with the Spirit, I have learned to focus on staying more attentive to him, more in tune wi

In the same way, God will not ask us all to make the same level of sacrifice. Sometimes I look at the assignments given to other people and say, “Lord, am I inferior? In this season I’m not being asked to sacrifice like them.” I’ve never had to watch my family be fed to the lions. If God asks that of me one day, I hope I will endure it faithfully.

I believe the gospel is the most important and powerful means by which we experience the Spirit’s presence. Surprisingly, it is also the one most often overlooked (at least in our day). So let’s start with that one.

To look backward when they should have looked forward was not sacred; it was sinful and unbelieving.

In the Middle Ages, believers began to think of a “church” as a place that people went to for religious services, rather than a movement built around a mission.

Rather, I mean that Scripture spends more time focused on the type of people we should be and less on the specifics of where and what we do.

Third, I see in Scripture an enemy whose whole goal is precisely to give us “peace” about spectacularly wretched decisions. (When Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit, no doubt he gave her a “peace” about it, even though she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.) Fourth (and most important), I see nothing in Scripture telling us to look