Author: S&P

There are few things more exciting to witness than a new Christian who is enthusiastic about their faith. They suck in Bible teaching like a Shop Vac. But a problem often arises during this early season of their spiritual journey. When your initial spiritual growth spurt coincides with learning a lot about the Bible and the Christian faith, it’s easy to equate spiritual growth primarily with knowl...

“I’m praying for you.” “I’ll pray for that.” “My prayers are with you.” Christians throw statements like this out all the time, don’t they? The most cynical among us might wonder, “Is he really praying for me?” And yet, whatever the quality of someone’s follow-through, he tells us he’s praying because he believes prayer matters. It’s effective. J.I. Packer got it precisely right, “If you are a Chr...

Everyone Is Awesome? According to several national surveys, Millennials[1] are more than twice as likely as previous generations to rate themselves as “gifted,” “special,” “talented,” and “likely to change the world”—despite the reality that Millennials score the same (and sometimes worse) than previous generations in several areas, even after accounting for testing differences and other known bia...

Christian history. Some of you already may be tempted to stop reading. History, after all, is a subject that can often feel distant, boring, irrelevant. But I’m convinced you should care about the history of the church. In fact, I believe it’s essential. And for your good. Christianity is a history-anchored faith. We don’t teach a set of abstract principles or philosophical ideas; we teach the tru...

Teach theology long enough and you’ll face countless forms of the same basic question: What does this have to do with real life? Will it affect the way we do ministry, how we share the gospel, or what we do every day? How is it relevant to the problems and challenges the average person faces? You know, is it practical? And the deep suspicion lying behind such questions is that most theology is rat...

There is a great misunderstanding in churches of the purpose of music in Christian worship. Churches routinely advertise their “life-changing” or “dynamic” worship that will “bring you closer to God” or “change your life.” Certain worship CD’s promise that the music will “enable you to enter the presence of God.” Even a flyer for a recent conference for worship leaders boasted: “Join us for ...

As people living in a fallen world, we know what it is to have desires. We experience physical pain, witness injustice, suffer under various trials and ache with loneliness and grief. Even when all is going relatively well, our minds imagine how wonderful it would be if we had just a tad more. We rightly long for the restoration of Eden, but regularly find ourselves living outside of our hopes and...

One of the most important verses in all of Scripture regarding the uncertainty of human success and achievement is Ecclesiastes 9:11. There we read, “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.” This verse has become almost the singular sou...

I believe every Christian should strive to carve out time dedicated to Scripture reading and prayer every day. But for many of us, devotions aren’t very daily. Some people, like mothers of young children, have excellent reasons for this. Others, like many college students, not so excellent. If you struggle to fit in a daily quiet time, the open spaces in your schedule can be great places to squeez...

Caring for the poor isn’t easy—but it also doesn’t need to be overwhelming, at least when we recognize poverty from a biblical point of view. I explained in an earlier article that when we begin to see poverty the way the Bible does, we begin to see it as offering a number of practical opportunities to worship Jesus. But how we will worship—how our concern will be expressed—will differ from one pe...

Love Is Not Blank Check Affirmation “Will you support me in this decision?” my friend asked me. But I couldn’t support his decision. It wasn’t a problem of not wanting what’s best for him. In fact, it was because I wanted what’s best for him that I wasn’t able to go along with him. The decision would have only brought more problems, and my love for him didn’t want him to suffer needlessly. Yet my ...

My late father was a stay-at-home dad. He was a man’s man, a strong individual right out of a 1960’s Marlboro advertisement. Yet he was broken by extreme physical suffering and the sun never set on the pain of his pieced-together spine and extremities. It was normal to me that my father was always in the home. However, he was not there by choice. When I hear of fathers opting out of employment to ...