Following Jesus should never become a business deal. “Jesus, if I follow you, what will you do for me?” It is, however, difficult to avoid the conclusion that there are real benefits to biblical Christianity. I’m working my way through Rebecca McLaughlin’s new book Confronting Christianity. In it she takes up this topic. If you aren’t a passionate follower of…
Read More
Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism… there are so many options. Which one shall I choose? In college I took a comparative religions course from a self-professing atheist. I really appreciated his style and the class he taught. He was exceedingly objective – probably because he had no attachments to any of them. After poring over…
Read More
The Ten Commandments have received a bad rap in modern culture. Frankly, they’ve been mistreated by a wide-array of worldview persuasions. So I’d like to offer just two brief reasons we ought to hold The Ten Commandments in high regard. First, they tell us what matters to God. God didn’t play a game the day he…
Read More
Life is liking walking through a minefield. You never know what the next step will have in store for you. However, the book of Proverbs is like having a map showing you where all the mines have been placed; “step here, step there, don’t step over here…” While often overlooked, I wonder if we Christians…
Read More
Let’s imagine for a moment that living a good life will get you to heaven someday. All the charitable giving you’ve done, all the volunteer hours, all the niceties to strangers, all the service of loved ones – all of this accumulates over a lifetime and when you breathe your last, you enter heaven. As…
Read More
The gospel is different than any other religion or worldview out there. How so? “Religion” says, “I obey, therefore I’m accepted.” That is, when I morally or spiritually perform well, God will bless me and reward me with a good life and even heaven. The “gospel” says, “I’m accepted through the life and death of…
Read More
Humility goes a long way in nurturing us to a state of contentment. It is pride that stirs the waters until the foam of discontentment is unmistakably present. Today we’ll think about one sign of each. Sign of Discontentment: complaining The malcontent is ever complaining of one’s condition. Rather than deploying the calming power of…
Read More
So far we’ve discovered contentment doesn’t come naturally, but is something that is learned. We have to work at it. We’ve also thought about the relationship between discontentment and pride. Whenever there is discontentment, there is an underlying belief that my station in life should be different than what God has ordained for me. In…
Read More
There’s always a reason for our discontentment. Some situation we wish were different. But peel away the layers and what do you find? Lesson two: a discontented person is a proud person. How so? If you believe in a sovereign and providential God who sanctions even the minutest events (Matt. 10:29), then your situation is precisely the…
Read More
