christianity

A preacher who asks the following basic questions takes no inappropriate liberties with a text: What does this text reveal of God’s nature that provides redemption? What does this text reflect of human nature that requires redemption?

Self-centeredness is easily seen in the signs Paul lists: impatience, irritability, a lack of graciousness and kindness in speech, envious brooding on the better situations of others, and holding past injuries and hurts against others.

These truths of holiness by grace teach us that, as counterintuitive as it may seem, nothing more powerfully compels holy living than consistent adulation of the mercy of God in Christ.

The goal of life in our modern culture is no longer virtue oriented toward an end (as the Greeks argued) or religion oriented toward the divine (as the medievals argued). Rather, the goal of life is entirely subjective. It is found within the self. To be specific, the defining goal of an individual’s life in this disenchanted age is the

Discussion Questions 1. When you think of Pakistan, what comes to mind? What kind of country do you envision? 2. Do you feel as if we Western Christians have a fair and balanced view of the Muslim world? Why or why not? 3. Do you know anyone who lives in a place where it’s dangerous to be a Christian? What’s his or her story? 4. Most Muslims

This chapter is about what God was like before he created the world, a starting point that requires a little explanation. You would be quite within your rights to ask how on earth we can know such a thing. The simple answer is that we on earth can only know because God told us. A surprising amount of material in the Bible concerns the precreation

One of the crucial pennies to drop in the minds of those who find their way to faith in their adult years is often the realization that, if there really is a God such as the Bible reveals him to be, then he is smarter than I am and his judgement is more reliable than mine: if he and I differ on a matter, and if he is really God and I am really a

Stories, especially good stories, can provide us, Tolkien argues, a means of escape, recovery, and consolation.41 Good stories command what Tolkien calls “secondary belief.”42 We escape from our primary world and enter a secondary world through the imagination. While we are “in” the secondary world, we experience joy and sorrow, hope and fear, as

I hope to one day see the hearts of men so foundationally settled, so well-trained, so well-equipped, and so well-engaged that when evil dares raise its head, Beloved Sons/Warrior men will know what to do and will do it well.