We all know the greatest commandments: love God and love people. Sometimes what we don't really appreciate is that the first of these is "love God". Loving God MUST be the first and foremost important part of our faith. Otherwise, the entire theology of what it means to serve a truly divine God wastes away. Recognizing the dominion of God above all else is to firm foundation God desires, and we need ..read more

What does it mean to have a reactive heart? Some of us are simply more emotional than others... is that such a bad thing? When we look at how Christ reacted to the world around him, it was anything BUT reactionary. Christ lived for his purpose and mission which led him to react in an almost muted fashion. It makes you wonder how much more we think of ourselves when we don't feel the responsibility to safeguard our emotions when Christ himself was slow to react to the injustices and insults thrown his way ..read more

When you step back from our typical Christian education, it is wild to think that anything overshadows the glory of what Christ did on the cross. We see images of God's glory in the miracles of the Old Testament and rightfully point out "this is clearly a display of God's glory". However, when we talk about Christ's grace every week, year-in and year-out, we start treating it as if it's somehow less wonderous than anything else God has done. Christ is the radiant and glory of God. He is the embodiment of God's Will, sent to earth for our sins. When we stop to revel in what God has done with Ch ..read more

Sometimes I think we don't talk enough about the Glory of God and how it moves us to fundamentally see the world differently. The reality is that we live in a remarkably privileged world. Illiteracy was at 79% in the year 1900. Today it is around 13% globally. The average life expectancy from the Neolithic period until 1900 was between 30-40 years of age. Today it is over twice that. One hundred years ago, most of the world population lived in what is classified "extreme poverty". Today that number is down to 8%. We are blessed and refusing to acknowledge it is foolishness. The problem is that ..read more

Something happened in Christianity around 100 years ago. Churches got big, started offering programs and services, then followers started getting lazy. We began tricking ourselves into thinking Christianity was more about what we could consume rather than what role God played in our lives. The situation of the current church is complex since we have some churches steeped in decades-young tradition, others obsessed with public image, and yet others pursuing whatever new programs and fads are making the rounds of religious circles. We can talk all day about the problems with churches, but what i ..read more

The early church was definitely a community-driven organization, but do we really HAVE to be a part of the whole "church thing" today? Absolutely. Christ, Paul, and all the apostles seem to place a high premium on the value of community. The word "Ekklesia" used to describe "church" in our Bibles makes no distinction between vague concepts of a "universal church" vs our locally organized church. It's all a part of the body of Christ and we can't claim to want to know Christ while also spurning his body ..read more

Ever get tired of skeptics and know-it-alls claiming that your celebration of Christmas is a pagan occasion? Even though our practice of a holiday may have some cultural roots in different faiths, there is something special to the Christmas season. It isn't the forms and ceremonies we recognize as much as it is the heart of the matter. This lesson can be seen clearly in another non-Christian holiday celebrated at this time of year: Chanukah. Why might a Christian observe Chanukah even though we don't adhere to the Jewish faith? Maybe it's because of the heart behind the holiday ..read more

Administration doesn't evoke the most exciting mental image. Most of us would much rather be serving in some awesome ministry work, teaching kids, preaching, or doing other work viewed as more glamorous or "useful". The problem we encounter is overlooking that administration is a very real spiritual gift granted to many individuals to make the church more effective. We see elements of administration spattered throughout the Bible. When done properly, administrators do far more than simply "do the boring work"; they become critical leaders, supporters, and planners of the essential work God has ..read more

A lot of Christians get very worked-up about the optics of their ministry. They want to ensure they're helping the right people, showing up at the right events, and putting the correct polish on their ceremonies. Sometimes, in an attempt to stand up for what is seen as "righteous", they lose an element of genuineness that can be beautiful in its raw form. When we look at individuals who allowed themselves to be "outed" in a raw manner before Christ, we find God blessing them far more than those who sought to observe the correct protocols or optics. The question for you is... when is the last t ..read more

When the pandemic started, the most basic thing society could implement was social distancing. For all the political debate over the merits of social distancing, it's common sense that if you maintain a little space, your likelihood of contracting a communicable disease goes down. As Christians, there is a degree of spiritual distancing that we are called to do for similar reasons: we are in the world, but not of it. There is this degree of healthy distance we maintain spiritually from this world because it keeps us from falling into the same old pitfalls that the world readily provides ..read more