How many different ways can we apologize to God? Quite a few, actually. And in the ancient prayers of God’s people—in Scripture and outside it—their focus quite often turned to confession or its many related expressions: remorse, guilt...
The simplest definition of prayer is talking to God. While that’s certainly true, prayer is also a unique place where we experience the breadth and depth of the Christian life. Still, prayer isn’t easy—even though it’s one of the most vital parts of...
Grace is generally understood as a gift: the favor or kindness one person gives to another. Grace is, therefore, generally understood to be something that is not earned or deserved. Your paycheck is not grace. Your boss is not expecting a thank-you...
Since the fall in the garden of Eden, death has held dominion over all living things, not least of all human beings. Though Scripture tells us of an occasional Enoch or Elijah, death claims all living entities eventually, no matter their age, title...
Is Christmas a Christian holiday? Yes. Yes, it is. I’m being definitive up front because so many today are committed to the public and often gleeful discrediting of Christmas. Some such naysayers are devoutly Christian and seeking earnestly to...
We call ourselves Christians. This name was first given to us in the city of Antioch. It distinguished the disciples of Jesus—those who professed him to be the Messiah or the Christ—from other Jews of the day. Christians continue to be identified by...
I drove past the Christmas light display in the center of town and my preschooler gazed at the glistening colors and yelled, Jesus is the light of the world! She no doubt learned this in Sunday school, but is Jesus a string of red and green lights...
I came to faith in Christ at the age of sixteen because two church ladies shared the gospel with me. The year I became a Christian, the Holy Spirit ignited curiosity within me, especially regarding the characters in the Bible. Thankfully, I now...
It’s a very catchy song. A mysterious minor key, a melody that sticks in your ear, cadences that just ache their way to resolution. It is also ubiquitous—and received uncritically by many who hear it. The song Mary, Did You Know? is as much a...
Joan Osborne’s 1995 pop hit What If God Was One of Us? asked an excellent question. Another song, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing—a famous hymn of Charles Wesley and George Whitefield—gives the correct answer. The ancient world had many deities, even...
Christmas is upon us, and like last year, the world is—different. Yet students are still coming home for the holidays, and families are (mostly) still gathering. Amid the uncertainty, people are looking for comfort and even direction. It’s a vital...
What is the Orthodox Church? And how do Orthodox Christians approach the study of Scripture? For many believers outside of Orthodoxy, Orthodox Christianity seems exotic and foreign. But for believers inside her communion, she is sometimes called the...
What do good works have to do with salvation? Absolutely nothing! I would like to contest the notion that Paul contradicts himself when he insists that salvation does not come from works and that we must work out our salvation. We will investigate...
Over the course of history, theologians, commentators, preachers, and readers of the Bible have pondered what it means to be justified by faith in Christ, as Paul says in Galatians 2:16 (LEB). There are several knots that we have to untie when it...
This article explains the distinctive beliefs of the Methodist branches of Christianity, answers common questions, and shares the best resources for Methodist and Wesleyan Bible studies.
When I was sixteen, a youth ministry challenged me to share my faith with my family and classmates. I had grown up in and out of church and didn’t know much of the Bible beyond the epic Sunday school stories most people with some church background...
When God established the feasts in the Old Testament, he set milestones to remind his people about who he was and how he had rescued them (over and over). While many Christians no longer celebrate the feasts, there are still plenty of places on our...
Genesis 3:8 is a familiar verse in a familiar story: Adam and Eve have sinned, and now, in the cool of the day, they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden. Afraid, they hide among the trees.
The Anglican Church, originating in 16th-century reforms in England, is now a global faith group of over eighty million people. With the Holy Scriptures as its basis, Anglican belief supports a variety of doctrines informed by the three historic...
For five hundred years, the term “Lutheran” has served variously as a badge of confession for a specific definition of Christian, for Martin Luther’s supporters, as a word of insult used by foes to condemn a variety of views opposed to their own, or...
Anglicanism is a religious identity claimed by millions of faithful Christians across the globe. In fact, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion of churches after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It is a tradition...
I have a confession: I’ve been a full-time evangelist for over two decades and I rarely do the job you think I do. In a moment, I’ll tell you more about what I actually do. More importantly, I want you to know what evangelism really is, why it is...
What does Pentecostal mean? The word comes from the Greek pentekoste, which means fiftieth. This will explore how Pentecostalism began, the first hundred years of the movement, and how Pentecostalism differs from Evangelicalism.
It’s common for Christians today to think of their church bodies as denominations; that is, different varieties of a common religion. This tendency is so pervasive that churches who want to shed conventional labels will even call themselves non...
Prayer by itself has no power whatsoever. It wields no inherent supernatural sway; nor does it involve a formula or ritual which, if done right, guarantees any desired result. Christian prayer is not magic. The measure of prayer’s power, then, is...
What is Reformed theology? In the land where the Azusa Street Revival, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Calvary Chapel, and Saddleback Church had their birth and continue their influence, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been...
When he speaks of the kingdom of God, Jesus simultaneously captures our greatest dreams and summarizes the drama of salvation history. The idea of God’s own kingdom is evocative: the ideal society, utopia, paradise. A kingdom in which all citizens...
Poet Robert Frost famously wrote about two roads that diverged in a yellow wood, and he expressed regret that he could not take both paths. This captures a universal human experience: as finite humans, a yes to one path is necessarily a no to the...
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of...
When you saw that this article was going to be about lust, which Bible verses came to mind? My guess is that you started out with the command about adultery and then remembered Jesus’s words about lusting after women (and cutting off your hand). And...