We are to go out and preach repentance under the power of the Holy Spirit After Jesus calls his disciples, he trains them and then sends them into the world. He gives them five simple instructions: Go Out To be effective Jesus’s disciples can’t hang out with each other. They need to go out into […]
We can learn to pray by following Jesus’s example, as long as we don’t misapply it When it comes to praying, there is no better teacher than Jesus. Perhaps that’s why many of his followers memorize the prayer he taught his disciples and why many churches include this prayer in their church services. We commonly […]
Through Jesus We Can Discover Our Response to Violence and Oppression Seldom a day goes by when we don’t hear of terrorists who commit violence and murder in the name of their faith. These religious zealots believe a higher calling gives them the right to kill others in order to elevate their beliefs. This seems […]
What We May Perceive As a Lack of Love May Actually be the Embodiment of It In the book of Revelation, John shares a grand vision with an epic scope, far reaching and future focused. But before we get to that, God has some first-century messages for seven area churches. Three of these messages appear […]
Does that Make Him the Word of God? The book of John, which is a biography of Jesus, opens with a most poetic passage. It calls Jesus the Word. It confirms Jesus’s presence at creation and that he took part in it. In fact without Jesus creation wouldn’t have happened. Life came through Jesus. His […]
Four Insights in How We Are to Approach God Because of who Jesus is and what he did for us, our relationship with God the Father changes. Through Jesus we have a new connection with Papa that we didn’t have before. We can now approach him. In fact the writer of Hebrews encourages us to […]
Jesus Wants Us to Live in Unity but Instead Our Manmade Denominations Divide Us I recently attended a friend’s ordination ceremony who had graduated from seminary and became a minister. It’s not the first such occasion I attended, and it won’t likely be the last. It was, however, the first time I really listened to […]
The List of Faith Essentials Is Short, a List of Only One Item Two thousand years ago the religious leaders, called Pharisees, heap a bunch of manmade requirements on the backs of the people so they can be right with God. Some scholars place the number at over 22,000 regulations, far more than the 613 […]
Jesus Uses Narrative to Inform Us About His Father’s Kingdom Jesus uses parables—“an earthly story with a heavenly meaning,” as I learned in Sunday school—to teach us about the kingdom of God. We are part of the kingdom of God, and we need to do a better job of acting like it. Since Jesus talks […]
Ananias Obeys God to Heal Saul Who Wants to Arrest Him I like the story of Saul’s conversion in the book of Acts, turning him from a murderous bigot into a passionate follower of Jesus. A flash of light, a voice from heaven. It has all the makings of a great story. In this account, […]