Jesus knew that his time had come to leave this world. So, like a wise and loving father who assembles his young children around his deathbed to prepare them for life without him, Jesus gathered his disciples to equip them to be his effective witnesses in the world following his departure. In this affectionate discourse, we […]

At the end of his life, Paul wrote these warm words to Timothy: “As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4). When Timothy first joined Paul’s team (cf. Acts 16:1f), Paul was about 50 and Timothy was perhaps 20. When Paul wrote these […]

Have you read, listened to, or watched the news recently? It is full of bad reports concerning war, diseases, natural disasters, crime, political corruption and turmoil, economic inflation, unemployment and poverty. Such is life under the sun in a fallen world where sin and its consequences are known and felt. As followers of Jesus we […]

Over many years I have seen that a person who has a rupture in relationship with his or her mother and does not know how to find acceptance and peace with God through Jesus Christ, may be susceptible to many difficulties in this life.  Broken child/parent relationships of any kind very often present in ongoing […]

I assume that as a Christian, you pray regularly. We are taught to “Continue steadfastly in prayer” (Col. 4:2), to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). These exhortations include all types of prayer: for ourselves (Matt. 6:11-13; Mark 14:38), for missionaries (Eph. 6:19-20; Col. 4:3-4; 1 Thess. 5:25; 2 Thess. 3:1), for the advance of […]

The son and daughter-in-law of missionary J. Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) were privileged to spend much time with Taylor in China. They not only saw Taylor’s ministry in public, but the kind of man he was in private. Well do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in northern China, by cart and wheelbarrow, […]

At the heart of the gospel is this message: Jesus of Nazareth is alive from the dead! According to the Apostle Paul, that reality is the linchpin of the Christian faith, both for those who proclaim it and those who believe it (1 Corinthians 15:14-19). So, what difference does it make that Jesus is risen? […]

My precocious and normally charming five-year-old granddaughter hugged me this week, then paused and said, “You smell like broccoli soup.” She flitted off and left me wondering how that could possible be.  I shared this with her father who laughed with me and said that she had said the same thing about him. Since neither […]

Believers know the future. That doesn’t mean we have knowledge of certain specifics (future spouse, job, number of children, etc.). But we can be confident in what the Bible says God has planned and promised, and that should change how we think and act in the present. In Daniel 8, during “the third year of […]