Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God.
I imagined God looking down on the earth and seeing people on one side of the planet gathering expectantly whenever prayer was happening. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, people show up only for the most talented people and the “atmosphere.” It’s embarrassing.
It is the Holy Spirit who keeps us from this path and gives us confidence so we can enjoy intimacy with our Creator. Though I do not believe God gives us His Spirit solely for our personal benefit, it is undeniable that one of the greatest aspects of being in relationship with the Holy Spirit is the intimacy, security, and encouragement He brings us. It is then we can serve God as a beloved child rather than a stressed-out, guilt-ridden slave.
Many want to change the Church, but it is often motivated by personal preference rather than biblical conviction.
You should really spend the rest of your life and the rest of your marriage trying to live more humbly and more sacrificially with respect to the people around you.
If we really want to love our neighbors as ourselves, then it makes sense that we spend at least as much on them as we do on ourselves.
Stories of people who died after living godly lives are stories with happy endings.
God spoke, and the world came into existence. God spoke, and the world was demolished by a flood. One day, God will speak the only verdict that matters as He judges every person. This is the God who knows you, even now. This is the God who is watching you as you read.
The Bible compels us to join God in what He is doing in and around us. Studying the Bible is important, but the goal is never knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
The most terrifying images of hell occur, as we have seen, in the book of Revelation. But let’s remember the context in which John writes this book. This isn’t an evangelistic tract written for unbelievers – the hell passages here weren’t designed to make converts and scare people into the kingdom. They were designed to warn believers to keep the faith in the midst of adversity.
But God is not a coercive God. And though He desires for His children to know peace and love and to have wisdom, I have noticed that often He waits for us to ask.
For those of us who nurture a win-at-any-cost mentality, this verse should shake us to the core. Only a fool would sacrifice this much for any victory. Let this sink into your brain: God actively fights against the proud person. The pride required to win your argument and defeat your “enemy” provides you with a new opponent: God.
The goal of a good pastor is to raise up good pastors.
The God of the universe – the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor – loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.
Like a marriage that has no purpose, many churches have forgotten the point of their existence. They can quickly focus on the complaints of their people rather than the cries of the lost. We get more emotional over Christians leaving to go to a different church than we do about people dying and going to Hell. Something is horribly wrong when we grieve more deeply over people rejecting us than those who reject their Messiah.
There’s a serious problem if the Spirit is grieving our division yet we feel fine about it.
In many ways, we have lost a sense of the true holiness of God, and that has caused pride to grow and fester in the church. Everyone seems to start out with the assumption that his or her opinion of God is right, rather than recognizing that all of us have an incomplete, flawed knowledge of God.
Being a Christian means that Christ has entered you, filled you with His love, and is pouring His life through you to the people around you. If you have experienced the life-changing love of Jesus, you will be overflowing with love for God and others. It’s that simple.
We get more emotional over Christians leaving to go to a different church than we do about people dying and going to Hell. Something is horribly wrong when we grieve more deeply over people rejecting us than those who reject their Messiah.
Many of our problems could be reconciled if we discussed our concerns on our knees before a Holy God.
If you can’t find a single person who looks to you as a mentor, something is wrong with you. And social media doesn’t count. I’m talking about flesh-and-blood humans who mimic your actions. This requires living a life that’s worth duplicating, which is quite a bit harder than posting pictures and quotes.