The Purpose of Lent? An Invitation of Decrease and Increase
I never quite understood Ash Wednesday when I was younger. My home church never emphasized anything about Lent, or even Good Friday for that matter. In my experience growing up in church, winter was over, spring started springing, then it was time for Easter Sunday! That meant getting up before the crack of dawn, putting […]
God’s Judgment: A Summons to Repent
One of the most important questions you can ever wrestle with is this: Which judge of your life matters most to you? Lots of people will have this or that to say about how you live your life. Some will judge how you live positively, while others will judge you negatively. What you have to […]
Idolatry in the Bible (and in Our Own Hearts)
Satan is always scheming and making efforts to tempt us, to dishearten us, and to break us with many other things that can take away our focus from God. The Scripture says, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8, NASB) and […]
Why Does God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart?
Summary: Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus? This article will explore how There is hope when we listen to God and unharden our hearts to his leading. When we keep hardening our hearts, it makes us increasingly unable to respond to God’s direction. Eventually, God will use the destruction of […]
3 Steps for Choosing Obedience When You Suffer
When I contemplate human suffering, two words come to my mind: lamb stew. One winter evening I joined a friend in her home for dinner. I looked forward to it as her cultured culinary skills always made our shared suppers delightful and delicious. We sat down to an elegant table setting. She served the main […]
Who Was Zipporah in the Bible?
Zipporah lived approximately 1500 years before Christ and she was the wife of Moses. She acted decisively in a crucial moment to protect her family, and she helped her husband fulfill his obligation to God. After four hundred years in Egypt, the Israelites cried out for God to rescue them from slavery, and God raised […]
Because You Say So, I Will
God’s ways are higher than our ways, so it’s no wonder that some of His commands don’t always make sense to us. Throughout the Bible, we see examples of people being asked to do things that defy human logic. In the fifth and sixth chapters of Luke, Jesus repeatedly asked people to take actions that […]
Accountability and the Bible: Are Christians Supposed to Hold Each Other Accountable?
Not too long ago, I attended church where I had been the senior minister/pastor many years earlier. After church, I had a conversation with a man about a Bible professor we both knew from a Christian university who was teaching pro-LGBTQ theology. I voiced my concern about the increasing influence of more progressive professors on […]
