If you read a biography about John and Betty Stam, you will be impressed with their enthusiasm for Christ before they were ever on the mission field (serving with China Inland Mission [CIM]). They met at a CIM prayer meeting while students at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and eventually really liked each other. However, […]

More evangelicals skip church meetings than attend them. That’s a fact . . . an embarrassing one. One leader claims even the FBI could not find many of them. Some churches have decided to take action to recover the inactive only to find that their church rolls were filled with people who never intend to […]

And these will go away into eternal punishment (Matt 25:43a).  Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758) believed in the eternity and torment of hell. [1] “What is there in this world, which is not a trifle, and lighter than vanity, in comparison with . . .  enduring eternal torment?” “How can men be so careless of […]

I queried an older man who had become a dear friend with a pointedly stark question: what is your purpose in life? He is advanced in years. He ought to know by now. The question struck home, and he teared up trying to answer it.  He failed. He had nothing much to say. And he […]

“Just as sure as sparks fly upward, likewise man is born for trouble” (Job 5:7). All of us are either coming out of a trial, in the midst of a trial, or will soon be going into a trial. When suffering comes, where will we find the strength to endure without sinning? More than that, […]

We probably all have a story of accidentally leaving a child behind somewhere. Maybe you arrived home from church with one less child. I once knew a guy who left his wife behind at a rest stop. Accidentally. When twelve-year-old Jesus was left behind at the temple, we can imagine the words exchanged between Mary […]

Well, it’s the new year. We made it around the sun again. The inhabitants of Earth make the full circuit once every year—365.25 days, or 365 days and 6 hours (which explains why we observe Leap Year and add a day every four years). If you are 45 years old, you have made 45 trips […]

Believers suffer for the benefit of other suffering believers.  Paul told the Corinthians that the affliction he and his team experienced in Asia was so difficult that “we despaired of life itself. Indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (2 Cor 1:8b-9a). God had a purpose, though: “But that was to […]

Perhaps you have heard the gospel before. But you have not yet come to Jesus or believed in him to save you. What can you do? First, hear the gospel again and be sure you understand who Jesus is, what he has done to deliver sinners, and how you must respond to be rescued. Speak […]