An Easy No As Sunday approaches, I want to return to last week’s church. Instead, I refer to our list. The second closest church to our house is another from traditional denominational church, a short 1.4 miles away. I attended a church in this denomination for the first decade of my life. Later, early in […]
When Christ Speaks, We Should Be Ready to Listen What Jesus says is important to us as his followers. The passages in the Bible that we need to pay the most attention to are the words of Jesus. Some Bibles even highlight Jesus’s words by putting them in red. We call these red-letter editions. People […]
Understand How to Respond to This Perplexing Practice A perplexing verse in Paul’s letter to his friends in Corinth mentions being baptized for dead people. What in the world does this mean? It sounds heretical. Can we be baptized for dead people? Well, I suppose so, but we shouldn’t expect it to accomplish anything. Should […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:4 Focus verse: We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:4) John uses the pronoun we a lot in this letter, over forty times in its short five chapters. Later we’ll see him use we as inclusive language to embrace all those who follow Jesus. Yet other times, especially in […]
The World’s Understanding of Hope Pales in Comparison to the Bible’s As followers of Jesus, we put our hope in him. But what does it mean to hope? The world’s understanding of hope isn’t very comforting. And the dictionary doesn’t do so well at aligning its definition with how Scripture uses the word. Hoping Is […]
Warm Inside Despite my encouragement, Candy has provided little input on the churches we visit. Though she recommended The Church with the Fundamental Vibe and The Nonconventional Church, I compiled the rest of the list. Today we’ll visit the closest church. Originally containing thirty-five names, I’ve now cut my list in half. While it might […]
The Church Opposed Martin Luther and Eventually Excommunicated Him Longing for unity, Martin Luther didn’t want to see the church divided. But when reconciliation didn’t happen and he was excommunicated, he had no choice but to form a new church practice aligned with what the Bible taught and apart from the Church he loved. A […]
A Physical World and a Spiritual Reality We live in a physical world. We can interact with it though our senses. It is tangible. It is real. Contrast this to the spiritual realm. We exist in both physical and spiritual realms. While this is true, there is more—much more. There is a spiritual reality that […]
Today’s passage: 1 John 1:2–3 Focus verse: We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. (1 John 1:3) Building on the phrase Word of life, John continues by saying that the life appeared—that is, Jesus appeared—whom John has seen and testifies about. He proclaims Jesus’s life […]
Discover the Truth About Our Creator’s Sovereignty Most people recognize God as sovereign. Yet they may not have a good understanding of what that word means. And because of their misperception, God often gets blamed for things he didn’t do. Sovereign in the Bible The word sovereign shows up 295 times in the Bible, mostly […]