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Christian Living

Be Careful What You Say

Control Your Tongue and Watch Your Words There’s a saying of disputed authorship, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” As such, we need to be careful what we say. The Bible has much to share about our words and our tongue. Tame the Tongue James […]

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Christian Living

Be Careful If You Tithe

Discover What the Bible Says about Tithing We’ve talked about tithing, giving 10 percent of our income to God. If we do it as a way to honor him or draw closer to him, then tithing with this attitude is a great idea and an example of a spiritual discipline. However if you tithe because […]

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Christian Living

What Are the End Times?

Discover What the Bible Says about the End of Time Some Christians give a lot of attention to the end times. Others choose to ignore it. Interestingly, the phrase end times doesn’t appear in the Bible, at least not in the NIV. Though four subheadings, added later, do carry this phrase. The End Times These […]

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Christian Living

3 Problems Caused by Theology

An Academic Pursuit of Religious Knowledge Can Cause Much Harm When I wrote about the dangers of pursuing a right theology, I noted that God doesn’t want us to know about him. He wants us to know him on a personal level. In our pursuit of knowledge, we seek to categorize our understanding of God. […]

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Christian Living

Listen and Obey

Be Doers of the Word and Not Hearers Only I write a lot about the importance of reading Scripture and studying God’s Word. But reading and studying the Bible is not enough. We must apply what the Bible teaches to our daily lives for it to matter, for it to change us and impact the […]

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Christian Living

Retail Religion Takes Us Down the Wrong Path

Too Many People Are Spiritual Consumers Who Pursue a Retail Religion This idea of receiving services influences our church selection process. Seldom do people look for a church that gives them the opportunity to serve. Instead they look for a church for the benefits it provides: the music, the message, and the ministries. They’re church […]

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Christian Living

Faith Is an Action

We Demonstrate That We Follow Jesus through the Things That We Do I’ve written that we should treat love like a verb. I also suggested that we’ll do well to view Christian as a verb and not so much a noun (and certainly not an adjective). We should do the same thing with faith. Yes, […]

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Christian Living

How Important Is It to Have the Right Theology?

God Doesn’t Want Us to Study Him; He Wants Us to Know Him When people first learn that I have a PhD and where I did my postgrad work, they assume I’m into theology. Imagine their disappointment to find out I don’t care about the concept or want to pursue a right theology, that I […]

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Christian Living

To Be Served or to Serve Others

Consider Your Attitude toward Church and Your Motivation for Going When I listen to people talk about church, I often hear what draws them in and what drives them away. They enthuse about programs for them and the youth group for their kids. They gush about the skill of the minister delivering inspiring sermons, the […]

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Christian Living

How a Business Mindset Influences the Church

A Church and Its Congregation Shouldn’t Let a Corporate Mentality Infiltrate It’s Thinking In “Why Business Practices Hurt the Church” we discussed how business thinking has improperly affected the big-picture perspectives of church. Yet the business mindset goes deeper than that, negatively influencing church practices and attendee attitudes. Spiritual Outcomes Are Not Quantifiable The business […]