christianity

Jesus taught his disciples to be “fishers of people,” his analogy for a disciple who makes disciples. The apostle Paul later used the analogy of being an ambassador. Whether we see ourselves as ambassadors, fishers of people, or disciple makers, the terminology revolves around a central concept: you and I, as disciples of Jesus, are called to go

According to Berry, the underlying malady of our culture is the inclination toward fragmentation. We disrupt the unity of creation by splitting spirit from body, culture from nature, sexuality from fertility. “It is not possible to devalue the body and value the soul”, he writes, and I want to adapt that statement, swapping “soul” for “self”.10 It

John concludes this section with a royal decree: “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Rev. 21:5). This is the true magnitude of the biblical gospel: There will be nothing old, dilapidated, impure, or worn out in the radiant kingdom of Christ.

If God has freed his people from the guilt and power of sin, then preachers have no right to put believers back under the weight Jesus bore.31 For many preachers, this is a particularly difficult imperative because in their own experience they have been so motivated by unrelenting guilt or by subtle appeal to greed that they have no real concept of

To keep listeners engaged until the conclusion of an illustration, preachers must keep all its parts closely tied to experience by using concrete details that enable listeners to relate to it.69 Webb Garrison explains why concreteness empowers illustrations and furthers understanding: “If I were to talk at length about my having been deeply moved

Consider the common mantra of those who don’t believe in God. They pose this challenge: “If God exists, then why doesn’t he make himself more obvious? If there was any evidence for God, then I’d believe in him.” Really? Is it that simple? This common challenge is problematic for two reasons. First, it wrongly assumes that no evidence for God exists

C. H. Spurgeon said, If I never won souls, I would sigh till I did. I would break my heart over them if I could not break their hearts. Though I can understand the possibility of an earnest sower never reaping, I cannot understand the possibility of an earnest sower being content not to reap. I cannot comprehend any one of you Christian people

It’s not that we’re doing this for God so much as we’re doing it with him.

But if we really understood what “to God alone be the glory” means, it might solve a lot of the sinfulness and dysfunction in the evangelical church.