I know we’ve all done it. We’re sitting in church on a Sunday morning listening to the sermon. The pastor says something and we immediately elbow the person sitting next to us as if to say, “Pay attention. You need to hear this! This is all about you!” Or we’ll hear the preacher say something and…
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“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…” – Rev. 7:9 This picture of the heavenly scene is remarkable. The terms “every nation”, “all tribes”, “[all] peoples”, “[all] languages” is as exhaustive…
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Having grown up in the church and having spent a lot of time with other pastors, I can testify that many people will be studying their Bibles this Sunday, but completely missing the gospel. Just because the church teaches from the Bible doesn’t mean it is clearly presenting the gospel of grace in the life,…
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I don’t know that any society has had more options available to them over the course of human history than we do in the U.S. in 2017. As I scan my home office where I’m writing this, I see a door knob (attached to a door), a backpack, my phone, the computer I’m writing on…
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Why did God create? We know from the rest of the Bible God didn’t create because he had needs he wanted his creation to meet. It’s not as though God had an itch he couldn’t scratch so he made the cosmos to take care of that for him. So why did God create? Well, let…
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Younger generations tend to be more suspicious of “institutional church.” Perhaps they’ve been burned by them or just turned off by people who are a part of them, but show no fruit of the faith they profess. This attitude is represented in a somewhat recent book entitled, How to be a Christian Without Going to Church, by Kelly Bean. She maintains it’s possible…
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While it may not jump off the page at you, the main theme of this chapter is idolatry. So we’re going to ask and answer the following questions: 1) What is idolatry?2) How is idolatry diagnosed?3) How is idolatry cured? 1) What is idolatry? When we hear the term ‘idolatry’ we think of wooden or…
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It’s my prayer to see the local church be a place where people are given a taste of the new heavens and the new earth. The church is meant to be a harbinger of heaven to come. If the church is going to do that well, it must possess compassion. Without compassion, a church will become judgmental,…
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How does God’s grace affect change in people? I don’t know for sure, but sometimes I wonder if our mental picture of God’s grace is something that is soft, warm, and cuddly. If grace was personified it would be that newborn baby in the hospital nursery swaddled while everybody on the other side of the glass…
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Jonah is a biographical account of a man who is deeply religious, but far from God. This book gives the reader various aspects to a life that is religious, but spiritually dysfunctional. In chapter 1, we discover one aspect to a dysfunctionally religious person. Like Jonah, people like this have a category in their heads…
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