[Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up to the author’s previous article at Christianity.com entitled: “Is Your Church Worship More Pagan than Christian?“] “To be human is to worship.” Those are the opening words of Daniel Block’s excellent new book on worship, For the Glory of God. Men and women are inveterate worshippers. Paul makes this clear in Romans 1. Even those who reject the plain knowledge of God which can be perceived within the created order do not cease worshiping. Rather they simply begin worshipping created things instead of the Creator (Rom 1:18ff). Given that we all worship and that our hearts tend to be deceptive, it is vital that our worship be shaped by what God has made clear in His Word rather than by personal opinions, past experiences, or intuiti...

We live in an age hostile to correction. “No” has become a four-letter word in the modern vernacular. Our non-Christian friends don’t want to be told their unbelief warrants God’s judgment. That’s to be expected. But often our Christian friends don’t want to be corrected, either. And that’s sad, because a rebuke can be good for the soul. “The wise of heart,” says Solomon, “will receive correction” (Prov 10:8). So how do you know when to correct a brother or sister in Christ? “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” (Prov. 15:23). How do we know when to give that word? Thankfully, Scripture provides a trustworthy answer. It tells us when to correct and when to overlook. When to Correct Correct when the salvation of a brother or sister is in question. ...

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 knowledge growth. Measuring spiritual maturity merely by what you know can have disastrous results. Someone thinks she lives a great Christian life because she’s in three Bible studies, but she isn’t sharing the gospel with unbelievers. A leader at the church is regarded as the resident theology expert, but has anger issues at home. Small groups dig deep into God’s word, but don’t dig deep into each ot...

“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 Christian, you pray; and the recognition of God’s sovereignty is the basis of your prayers.”[1] Convinced that God is powerful and in control, believers go to him in prayer, entrusting the nuts and bolts of their daily lives into his omnipotent hands. But do we talk about prayer more than we actually pray? That’s the chink in the armor of our sanctification that I’d like you to think about for a mome...

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 biases. Much has been made of these surveys. Perhaps this is just what youthful arrogance looks like in every generation. Or perhaps Millennials really are overly self-confident. Who knows? What I do know is this: you’re not awesome, but Jesus is. That’s the message that everyone, whether eighteen or eighty-five, desperately needs to believe and remember and feel in the depths of their soul. It’s so ...

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 truth of a historical event. As Francis Schaeffer liked to say, if you were there 2,000 years ago you could have run your hand down the cross and gotten a splinter. How silly would it be for us to conclude, “Well, I believe Jesus lived and died and rose in historical time, and that without those historical events I’d be lost forever, but I don’t really care about history.” Further, if you’re a Christ...

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 rather impractical. Theologians spend all their time wrestling with things like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and whether we should say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone. Unless we can explain why these things matter for the everyday lives of regular people, we should stop wasting our time and get on with more important issues. I’ll admit t...

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 dynamic teaching to set you on the right path, and inspiring worship where you can meet God and receive the energy and love you need to be a mover and shaker in today’s world…Alongside our teaching program are worship events which put you in touch with the power and love of God.” The problem with the flyer and with many church ads is that these kinds of promises reveal a significant theologi...

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 dreams.  Most of the people I know desire good things:  a job, a spouse, healing, children, friends, ministry, and rest. The question we face on a daily basis is not whether or not we have desires, but how to discern when they drift from hopeful longings to become covetousness and entitled attitudes. Gaining insight into the health of our desires is a bit like discerning whether or not ...

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 source of self-evaluating recalibration for me in life. My mind returns there whenever I begin asking questions like: ·         Why does one advance more than another? ·         Why aren’t those who are most successful by human standards also always those who are most wise, knowledgeable and gifted? ·   &nb...

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 squeeze in the Bible. Even if you have a robust devotional life, you can still cram the Bible in wherever and however you can. Wedge it into the gaps in your schedule. Stuff it into the in-between places, the nooks and crannies of unclaimed time throughout your day. In other words, fit the Bible into the margins of your life. I don’t mean push the Bible out to the margins of your life, as in, “Quit maki...

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 person to another. The expression of our concern neither reflects nor establishes our holiness before God. Our responsibility is only to serve in the way in which we feel compelled. With that in mind, here are five things you can do to help the poor that really do help: 1. Begin in the church and move from there.So, practically, this means a couple of things: service starts within our local congrega...