It’s “shark week” on the Discovery Channel—TV’s annual celebration of man’s fascination with the ocean’s most feared and, perhaps, most misunderstood species. Since its inception in 1987, viewers have voraciously taken in hours of makos, hammerheads, and great whites weaving and darting through shadowy waters while an ominous score attends every menacing move. Courageous captains, camera operators, and divers lap up every life-threatening minute while viewers like me safely watch from afar. After watching shark week, you might tend to agree that the job of being a shark diver is one of the most terrifying and physically dangerous jobs in the world. Just last night, one diver in a segment (“Great White Serial Killer”) tried to describe what it was like to stand in a protective cage as it wa...

Are you ever overwhelmed by how difficult it is be to live a life that is pleasing to God? If the temptations of the world and the sin within our own hearts isn’t enough, Satan is also working overtime to see to our destruction, downfall, or weakening. He has no compassion, he doesn’t care how hard life is for you or all the things you have gone through. He rejoices in our difficulties and only wants to add to them. Satan is cunning and crafty. He is also more powerful than we give him credit for and therefore a being to be guarded against and fought against. He has the experience of all kinds of evil on his side as well as the fact that he never grows tired and never gives up spewing his hatred for Christ and his bride. He hates them because . . . they have escaped out of his hand, they o...

My pastor liked to crack jokes about being a “professional good guy.” Others—including his kids—remarked how he got paid to live right and make good decisions. The implied argument, of course, was that his words were less relevant to the everyday man. Indeed, in seminary, I learned of a professor who refused ordination for fear that people would stop listening to him. Below are five ridiculously brief biographies of “common” folk who never received a dime as professional good people. Perpetua (ad 180–202) Early Christians were no strangers to persecution—even to the point of death. The account of Vibia Perpetua’s martyrdom remains one of history’s most powerful. Augustine of Hippo found Perpetua’s story so influential, he delivered numerous sermons about her. Perpetua was a noblewoman, mot...

How can Christians experience the peace of God? This question was posed to me by a friend once. I explained to him that I usually have to start by preaching to myself, especially on days when my dad’s dementia affects me the most. Here’s what I preach to my own heart: Romans 5:1 states that the Christian has peace with God through our Lord Jesus. It is Christ alone who enables the Christian to have a new identity in Him— this the very basis for implementing the peace of God. Grounding his statement in Romans 5:1 with the word “therefore” the Apostle Paul connects what he has previously spoken in Romans 1-4 to what he will say in Romans 5:1-11. In Romans 5:1 he lays out what Christ did in His death, burial and resurrection resulting in the sinner—formerly at enmity with God—being give...

Maybe it’s the smug servant Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Perhaps it’s the extremely suspicious Boston community in Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlett Letter. Or it could be the more recent TV drama named for the location of the infamous Salem witch trials of early colonial America. High school history books continue to tell tales of America’s Pharisaic progenitors and their overly concerned moralism with attempts to establish God’s pure “city on a hill.” Many of us have grown up with an understanding of Puritans as those gloomy religious folk who found joy in making sure others had none. The tale of spoilsport Puritans continues to be told, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are 5 myths about Puritans which you may still be...

Many pastors, this one included, have a hard time opening up and being vulnerable with those around them. The lethal cocktail of pride and insecurity, combined with the belief that people need us to be an ever-stable, always-faithful, never-failing rock, causes some pastors to suffer in silence, struggle in secret, and suffocate in isolation. This sad tendency is destructive for the church, but deadly for the pastor. I hear a lot about growing our churches, preaching, and leadership, but little about the need for pastors to grow in their vulnerability. This is a problem. If you’re a pastor, I want to share three reasons I think you and I need to strive for healthy vulnerability with those in our lives. 1. Vulnerability Is Humbling The Apostle Peter said, “Humble yourselves, therefore, unde...

“We homeschool.” It’s amazing how loaded a two-word answer can be. If I’m in a room full of public school teachers, it can come across as condescending and dismissive of public education. If I’m in a room full of home school parents, it can make me sound like a hero. If I’m surrounded by Christian school parents, it might elicit pity. I don’t think there is any more divisive topic among Christian parents than the topic of education. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a way to have strong convictions about the type of schooling we prefer for our children in this season of life and still acknowledge that this is a complex issue and an issue that might lead Christian people to different conclusions. I’ve lived on all sides of this issue. As a Christian school kid, I thought, for long...

Should we hate sin? Absolutely! Psalm 97:10 makes this plain: “O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” That’s simple enough. Right? But why should we hate sin? God’s Glory is Supreme This first reason to hate sin takes supreme precedence. God’s salvation narrative more than anything is about his glory. He is a glory hound who does not share with anyone or anything. His collective attributes give us confidence that His glory is for our good. He’s righteous, so seeking glory is His righteous pursuit. He’s holy, so seeking glory is His holy pursuit. He’s beautiful, so seeking glory is His beautiful pursuit. We must trust this because, well, He’s trustworthy! This being the case, then our aim is to maximize God’s glory. The sinfulness of sin by design is a barrier to it, one that ultimately is ov...

The preaching event involves not only God, the preacher and the biblical text, but the people who listen to the sermon. Unfortunately, writing and teaching in the field of preaching has focused predominantly on getting the text right (exegesis), getting the style right (rhetoric) and most importantly getting God right (theology). These are, no doubt, essential concerns and skills for effective preaching, but something is missing. Getting the listener right is a paramount, though often neglected, consideration in preaching today. Effective sermons engage the varied listening styles represented in the congregation. Too often, we preachers become stylistically self-absorbed. We are tempted to let our stylistic preferences dominate our preaching. The only problem with my prefere...

When I started at my job a little over a year ago, I was the only Christian in my department. Since then, I’ve referred a few Christian friends, who have referred even more Christian friends, and there are now eight of us. This growth excited me for two reasons. First, I now had support in living out the Christian life at my work. Second, it increased an evangelistic witness for my non-Christian co-workers—people I care about deeply and would love to see know God.    Then something happened that I didn’t anticipate. A few weeks ago, the director and my fellow managers requested to speak with me about some issues with some of the Christians in our department. The company I work for partners with small colleges to boost their marketing, enrollment, retention, etc., and most of thes...

What kind of peace do you hope for in the Middle East? What kind of peace do you pray for? Once again the simmering conflict between Israeli and Palestinian groups has burst into flame. You’ve seen the images of explosions in the middle of residential street, of rockets flying through the air. You’ve listened to the talking heads go at each other over the issue again and again. I wonder, what is your initial response to it all? Conflict in this particular stretch of land inevitably leads to tempers and arguments erupting in a way that conflict elsewhere in the world does not cause, in or out of the church. There are important political, ethical, and theological issues tied to this conflict. These issues must be discussed and worked through with grace and sobriety. But as Christians, we als...

What you believe about God changes everything. It affects how you love, work, live, marry, parent, purchase, and worship. Think of just a few popular views that people have about God: Is God an impersonal blob who is uninterested in the world except for figuring out who the good and bad people are? Is “god” a karma vibe making sure everyone gets what they deserve? Is God a myth that weak, stupid, or oppressive people use to console themselves or dominate other people? Is God a cosmic cheerleader who is concerned mainly with helping you achieve immediate happiness and self-actualization? Or is God someone else? We Believe… God reveals himself to sinners and saves them for his glory. Theology is not obscure, abstract theories about the divine. Rather, theology is the study of a persona...