christianity

In the end we may be able to sustain a pulse, but it is hard to call it life. It is artificial and plastic. People gather in small groups for discussions, but lives are not transformed by the gospel. Real life begets more life. It changes lives and transforms cities. I want us to have that kind of life. That is the life that is promised through

The only antidote to the futility of life is a transcendent cause. Until a son discovers and commits himself to a cause that is truly heroic, timeless, and supremely meaningful, no amount of pleasure or success is going to satisfy his heart. King Solomon ultimately came to this same, painful conclusion and left us a record in his timeless book of

The longings for wholeness, justice, and significance are three aspects of a universal longing for goodness found within the human heart. As cultural apologists, part of our task is to partner with the Holy Spirit in awakening this longing for goodness. We do this by pursuing the one who is perfectly whole, the source of justice, and the fount of

The FCF sets the tone, determines the approach, and organizes the information in a sermon to reveal this divine provision and direct our response to it. Thus, the FCF is usually directly stated or strongly implied in the introductory portion of a sermon.

Passion comes naturally to sermons when preachers speak as though they are addressing a real concern with a friend. If a friend were to come to our door one evening and confess that his teenage son is destroying his family, we would invite the friend to sit at our kitchen table, and we would talk plainly. The hurt in our friend’s eyes would

And that is simply another way of saying that this is also a significant component of how we imagine our personal identiries, our selves. Again, to return to that statement I highlighted in the introduction-I ama woman trapped in a man's body"-such a statement is plausible ocly in a world in which the predominant way of thinking is poietic rather

In which specific verse or verses do these “errors” occur? It is surprising how frequently one finds that this objection is made by people who have little or no idea where the specific errors are, but who believe there are errors because others have told them so.

Jesus spent three-and-a-half years modeling a methodology to the Twelve. He knew that the mission of reaching the world would be left in the hands of his people, the church. Rather than just teaching truth, Jesus lived in such a way that his followers could see the practical application of truth in everyday life. The Scriptures record Jesus living

This means that when someone claims to be filled with the Spirit and yet spends most of his time talking about his own experiences with the Spirit, you have reason to doubt whether he really is filled with the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit speaks through someone, you tend to forget about the person speaking. You don’t even really think about the