Category: CHRISTIAN LIFE
The Chains of Habit
The chains of habit are often too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. This old saying has been quoted and adapted by many writers and speakers over the years. No one is completely sure who should get original credit for...
Spiritual Adultery and the Grace to Be Restored
Are you sinning often but professing to love the Lord? Though the fruit of constant sin against God can indicate a lost condition, true believers can also sin in awful ways. James has a helpful word for us in James 4:4-10. On the one hand the...
Don’t Miss the Greetings and Benediction
I have never regretted slowing down and meditating on the greetings and benedictions at the end of Paul’s writings. Here is the latest I’ve been contemplating: Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially...
Conversation: Make It Better for Christ
Good conversation went fugitive with the invasion of electronic media. Yet you long for it, and so do those in your circle of acquaintances. Believers in Christ ought to be excellent at it. Even our non-believing friends ought to leave us saying, “That was the best...
Older Each Day but Closer to Brand New
I’m thankful to God that I am in fairly good health and still physically active at age 60, but even so, things just don’t work like they used to. My eyesight, for example, as a 20-year-old, was 20/20, but by my mid-forties I needed prescription eyeglasses...
How a Christian Man Dies
Imagine someone moving across the country to be with you in his or her final days in order to show you how a follower of Jesus dies. That’s what happened to singer and author Michael Card. While a student in college, New Testament scholar William L....
Careless Conduct
I didn’t pay careful attention. We changed insurance carriers, and the new company denied my diabetes medicine that had been keeping my blood sugar levels in check. I temporarily switched to some “over-the-counter” insulin to use occasionally when my blood sugar spiked. But I was careless....
Pursue Love
Two simple words forming one simple command lead the way in Paul’s introduction to 1 Corinthians 14 — the chapter best known for Paul’s instruction about spiritual gifts in the meetings of the local church. “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts . . .”...
Two Men Worthy of Imitation
The NBA’s annual slam dunk contest was epic when I was a boy. It’s hard to imagine it getting better than the immense power of Dominique Wilkins versus the insane athleticism of Michael Jordan! They were spectacular examples for me. Of course, I don’t mean I...
Answer Your Own Prayer, Then Give God the Glory
King David was in trouble. For four years his own son, Absalom, had been secretly gathering a powerful following for himself among the men of Israel by turning their loyalties away from the true king and deceitfully undermining David’s authority. As the story is summarized in...
