Imagine there was a monitor attached to the side of your head. At any moment, it would display the exact thoughts—unfiltered—running through your mind. Does that seem cool to you? If so, you’re deluded. It would be a disaster. Our words are the clearest and best indicator of what’s in our hearts. Which is why Jesus said that every idle word would be brought into evidence at the judgment (Matthew 12:36). And that’s because “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34 ESV). What we think is buried in our hearts will inevitably come out. But we don’t have to resign ourselve ..read more

Demonic activity rarely looks like what we see in the movies—knocking things over or two red eyes suddenly glaring through the mirror. The devil works much more slyly than that, speaking lies entangled in truth and invading thoughts with temptations. In Ephesians, Paul refers to these demonic mental games as “flaming darts” (6:16). “Flaming darts” wasn’t something Paul made up. They were some of Rome’s most feared weapons, long javelins filled with fuel and set ablaze. The worst part wasn’t the dart itself, but what happened after it landed: All the fuel spread out and started a bunch of new f ..read more

In seminary, I was inspired by the story of two early Moravian missionaries, Johann Dober and David Nitschmann. These men became burdened to reach the inhabitants of an island now known as St. Thomas with the gospel; most of these inhabitants were slaves on a plantation. But the plantation owners feared the gospel and its results, and would not allow the missionaries to talk with the slaves. They would only allow slaves to talk with slaves, so these missionaries sold themselves into slavery in order to take the gospel to the islanders. Working in bondage in the harsh conditions of a tropical c ..read more

In the face of enormous, heinous, senseless evil, most of us sense, “There is something dark and powerful going on here.” More than just a few bad people. More than just wrong-headed ideologies. Even more than systemic injustices. We all sense, in our gut, that something bigger is at play. That’s probably why the vast majority of people throughout history—and the vast majority of people in the world today—recognize the reality of supernatural spiritual forces at work. It’s not that people in centuries past were more superstitious; it’s that they assumed there was much more to the world than th ..read more

One thing we all have in common is that we experience conflict in relationships. It doesn’t matter how perfect a relationship looks on the outside. At some point, fighting and disagreements will happen. What may surprise many of us is that conflict was a common experience in the early church, too. Whenever I hear people blissfully longing for the golden days of the early church, I kind of want to tell them to go read the New Testament again. Take the book of James, for instance. In chapters 3 and 4, James accuses his readers of being arrogant, weak-kneed, and double-minded. He accuses them of ..read more

Prayer is the means by which God gets his work done on earth. Elijah’s prayers literally altered the weather. His story is pretty incredible. Elijah served as a prophet during the reign of one of Israel’s worst kings, King Ahab. After years and years of unfaithfulness, Elijah confronted the king face to face, telling Ahab that as a sign of God’s wrath, God was going to withhold rain—not even a drop of dew—until Elijah said so. And for three and a half years, not one drop fell on the land. A terrible famine took over. So Elijah returned to Ahab and said, in essence, “See, I told you so.” Yet Ah ..read more

The story is told of a mother, two men, and a 14-year-old boy on a small plane. There was a malfunction and the plane began to spiral toward the ground. To their dismay, only three parachutes were on board. The woman, being a mother of five, grabbed one and jumped out of the plane. “My children need me,” she said. One of the men proclaimed, “I’m one of the smartest people in the world and a brain surgeon—my patients, my community, my country need me.” He grabbed the second parachute and jumped. Two people were left—the boy and an old man. The old man said, “Son, I’m old and frail, and I’ve liv ..read more

Jim Cymbala, author of Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, once said, “The great battle of our spiritual lives is ‘Will you believe?’ It is not, ‘Will you try harder?’ or ‘Can you make yourself worthy?’ It is squarely a matter of believing that God will do what only he can do.” I think James had this principle in mind when he was writing the conclusion of his book: Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the pray ..read more

A few years ago, the car I was driving started to have an awful smell. It was absolutely repulsive. I thought it might have been some mildew from water damage, so I pulled it into my garage and used a fan to dry it out. It still smelled. So I shampooed all of the mats and scrubbed the floorboards. It still smelled. Eventually, I realized that the smell was coming through the vents. But I’m not a mechanic, so I kinda guessed at this next part. I found the air intake valve near the floorboard, turned the A/C on full blast, and dumped an entire bottle of Lysol in there. I thought that was pretty ..read more

A couple of years ago, my wife and I visited some missionaries in Germany. One family we saw lived in a small, rural village in the countryside. When we arrived in their village, it was dark and difficult to see our surroundings. But the next morning, as I looked outside my window, I thought I had been transported to a poem. It was the most idyllic German hillside you could imagine. Sheep were grazing on the green, rolling hills. A windmill spun in the distance. Even the sky seemed a little bluer. But our hosts ruined the beauty of the scene during breakfast. They told us that just beyond the ..read more