Successfully Move from One Year to the Next I never really understood the allure of staying up late on December 31 to welcome in the new year. As such, I saw no reason to celebrate New Year’s Eve. As a teenager, however, I embraced the idea of staying up until midnight as confirmation I was […]
God Will Answer When We Pray After Zechariah’s discouraging implication that God is weary of his people and will no longer be their Shepherd, Zechariah has some good news. He concludes his prophetic writings with an optimistic prophecy of a better tomorrow, a future hope. This is a hope that the people of his day […]
Celebrate the Past, Anticipate the Future, and Embrace the Present Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8). Yet most people only celebrate what he has done or anticipate what he will do. They fail to see what he is doing now. That’s why we must live for today. Yesterday The Bible records […]
If You Are a Citizen of the Kingdom of God, Then You Live Here as an Alien Peter writes his first letter to Christians scattered about in pagan cities. He first calls them exiles (1 Peter 1:1). He also refers to them as foreigners (1 Peter 2:11). Though foreigner is accurate, I prefer the label […]
Eternal Life Begins Today (Not When We Die) Jesus often talks about the kingdom of God (the kingdom of heaven). He talks about how close the kingdom of God is, saying that it’s near and even that it’s here. How do we understand this immediacy of the kingdom of God in our life today? Is […]
Pray for Family and Friends Ever since our daughter was born, I knew I should pray for her, as well as for her brother, when he came along. I did pray for them—when I thought of it—which wasn’t very often. I felt guilty for not doing what I knew I should do. And when I […]
Many People Struggle to Ascertain God’s Will for Them, but the Bible Already Gives the Answers In our post about discovering the will of God, we noted three things he wants us to do: rejoice always, pray continuously, and give thanks in all situations. But that’s not all. The Bible also gives us other passages […]
Reviewed by Peter DeHaan Each day we make hundreds of decisions, such as getting on a bus or getting off a bus. Some of those choices have lifelong consequences. Such is the case with Ben Walker (Kevin Sorbo) in the movie What If…. His bus ride sent him on a path in the wrong direction, […]
Pray it Forward For my first ten years as a parent, I struggled to pray for my children. Oh, I did pray for them but not regularly, not every day. This changed when someone gave me a list of twenty-three traits to pray for my children. The items included that they would fall in love […]
Jesus says nobody knows when the world will end. Later on Paul confirms no one knows when Jesus will return (therefore signaling the start of the end). It will happen unexpectedly, like a “thief in the night.” So if the Bible says no one knows, why do some preachers make their audacious predictions anyway? Adding […]