One of my favourite stories in the Old Testament is the story of David slaying Goliath he took 5 smooth stones and defeated the giant that was stopping Israel’s success. As I reflect today on these events, I ask myself the question what type of faith must it take to defeat giants in our lives? …
When I first began to wrestle with Jesus’ Olivet Discourse (which emerges from a heated Matthew 23, rests solidly in Matthew 24 and then ascends into end-of-days judgment by Matthew 25), I struggled. At one point, I thought I had it figured out. Like many others, I determined there had to be a line drawn…
Do you know that your negative or positive future can be determined by how you see the present? In the Old Testament, there was an Israelite woman who was about to give birth. She had just heard that the Ark of the Covenant which housed God’s presence had been stolen. She was so upset about…
Lately, I’ve found myself constantly praying for God to change my situations. As if he doesn’t realize how messed up the world is. How broken we are. How chaotic 2020 has felt. I ask Him to change the circumstances surrounding me as if He’s just sitting up in heaven watching Netflix completely unaware of what’s…
Christians come in all shapes and sizes. They pursue practically the same diversity of occupations and interests as everyone else. They have political and economic opinions. Most of them spend their working lives balancing budgets, living in suburbia, paying off mortgages, raising kids (or electing not to have them) and generally coping from the cradle to the grave. So how unique are Christians compared to the rest of the world?
Are you low-spirited? Is your mind and heart bogged down by a multitude of issues? Failures, regretful words spoken, deeds you wish you could scrap from your history, wrong decisions you wish you could rethink over again?
Living in an over-sexualized culture, we hear messages about sex, wrong messages. These messages become more a part of us than God’s truth because we hear them repetitively and churches are scared to address sexuality.
The gospel is the message of what God has done for us to redeem us for himself. For us this finds its fullest expression in what God accomplished for us in his Son’s death and resurrection, namely, forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Yet this gospel grace existed before Jesus. Immediately after God pronounced the appropriate curses on rebellious Adam and Eve, he promised them a redeemer and sacrificed animals to cover their shame (Genesis 3:15, 21). From the beginning, the gospel has been the same: God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, that we might belong to him. Our only response is to receive this by faith.
