It’s fascinating to me that our New Year here in Western culture occurs in the dead of Winter. I know other cultures’ New Year occurs at different times of the year, and that’s great. I’m sure God is speaking to all cultures with the timing of their New Year celebration, but I’m only qualified to […]
Everything we do in life is driven by one of these two things. At the end of the day, these are the only two motivations in the human experience. Everything we do is driven by either our wounding or our calling. Here’s an example. Bob and Ted both help their church one Saturday morning a […]
As our regular readers know, this blog is all about our true identity in Jesus—the identity God created us to become. But let’s take one giant step backward. How can we understand who we really are in God if we’re confused about who God really is? In order to understand who we really are, we […]
I’ve lived my whole life, since I was a young boy, to hear Jesus say, on that Day, “Well done good and faithful servant.” (See Matthew 25:21 & 23.) Those six blessed words. While I was reflecting on how much I want to hear him say that, I heard the Lord tell me, in the […]
Our enemy is terrified of who God created you to be. And for good reason. When one Christian actually steps into the adventure God created him to live, the enemy’s kingdom suffers tremendous losses. Structures of lies that took decades to build come crumbling down in a moment. Whole people groups are set free. The […]
People are people. We get saved, and we’re instantly justified before God by the blood of Jesus. But we’re not instantly sanctified. We bring all our godless behavior with us into the church. Being justified means being forgiven. Cleansed of our sin. No longer cannon-fodder for Hell. We were saved from hellfire and brought back […]
Failure is a part of life, and how we handle it reveals our character. I’m not talking about the iterative failures, like practicing a skill and getting gradually better. I’m not even talking about moral failures or sin, although how we handle that also reveals our character. I’m talking about the “can’t get there from […]
As Christians, we all want to be helpful. We’ve experienced the blessing of sacrificing for another person. Unlike the world, most Christians I know really aren’t in it for themselves. We genuinely care about the communities we’re a part of, and we’re willing to sacrifice if it will contribute to the greater good. We long […]
Too often we listen to self-condemning lies because we don’t understand how God sees us. We put ourselves under pressure to be perfect. But God never designed us to bear such pressure. We can understand how God really sees us by looking at how we, as good parents, interact with our children. Let’s look at […]
Most relationship problems, and you could even say most sins in the world, come down to problems with this one thing. Boundaries. And most boundaries problems come down to the refusal to either hear or say one of two little words. “Yes” and “no.” [The concepts in this post come from the excellent book Boundaries by […]