Consider How the Example of the Early Church Can Inform Our Actions Today What is your perspective on miracles and supernatural signs? I’m talking about the things we read about in the Bible, especially the New Testament. This is about people receiving healing from their physical ailments and deliverance from their nonphysical afflictions. It’s about […]
Does Your Church Function Like the Early Church in Acts? Doubt it. Yes, you may see snippets of similarities, but if you look closely, you’ll find huge gaps. Don’t believe me? We’re Just Getting Started Wait, There’s More Dear Theophilus, Acts is a devotional. It’s a Bible Study. And it emerges as a manifesto for […]
Today’s destination is a tiny country church. Their pastor resigned a couple months ago and some families left as well. Another church from their denomination (some forty miles away) has come alongside them, providing assistance in their revitalization. Three couples from this other church now rotate in leading their Sunday services. “We’re in a rebuilding […]
Discover What the Bible Says and Doesn’t Say We’re supposed to tithe to the local church, to give 10 percent of our income, right? Hold on. Not so fast. What does the Bible say about tithing? The Bible talks a lot about tithing, of giving one tenth of what we have to God. However, there […]
Though God Never Changes, the Bible Shows Us How Our Interaction with Him Has As we read the Bible, it’s easy to stumble onto confusing and even conflicting perspectives of who God is and how we should interact with him. This is because God has revealed himself in different ways throughout the various historic arcs […]
Examine the Scriptures Every Day to See If What People Say Is True The book of Acts tells about the early church, with the latter two thirds of it focused on Paul’s travels and interactions with the various city branches of Jesus’s church. One brief stop is in the city of Berea. Luke writes this […]
The Broken Bread at the First Communion Represented Jesus’s Body The phrases breaking bread, break bread, and broke bread only appear in the New Testament. And they only show up eleven times, appearing in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and 1 Corinthians. Should we understand this idea of breaking bread as a euphemism for Communion or […]
Some of the Bible’s Most Significant Words Don’t Appear in the Old Testament I use the Bible to study the Bible. That is, I tap one passage to help breathe understanding into another. Sometimes when investigating a specific term, I do a word search to find out where else and how else Scripture uses it. […]
The Kingdom of God Is About Power, Not Words When Paul writes to his friends in the city of Corinth, he encourages them to change their behavior. In the middle of this, he slips in a curious line about the kingdom of God. He says that God’s kingdom isn’t about talk but about power (1 […]
Choose Labels With Care For They Reflect Our Identity and Theology By definition I am a Christian, but I’ve always shied away from that word. It means different things to different people, not all of which are positive. For too many, Christian is a negative label implying narrow minded, bigoted, or hate-filled people. Since these […]