We called it “The Month of Blessing,” and I still remember the butterflies in my stomach as the days approached. Yes, we fasted during the month of Ramadan, but it was not the fasting itself that I looked forward to. It was waking up early in the morning, before dawn, to pray and eat with my family; it was spending the day joyfully and charitably with my colleagues; it was gathering as a community after sunset to reconnect with one another and share life with each other; it was the pursuit of God’s pleasure and restored relationships with loved ones. For Muslims, Ramadan is the month of relationships. Now that I’m a Christian, the Gospel never ceases to overwhelm me. That God would take on human flesh out of love for mankind is a message worth living and dying for. It is a truth we should ...

I recently opened the refrigerator to find that my husband had put the cereal box on the top shelf, next to the milk. Laughing to myself, I took a picture and sent it to him, teasing him about his absentmindedness. As we’ve gotten older, forgetfulness is becoming the norm. It’s even become a regular family evening activity where we all search the entire house for whatever is missing: keys, phone, wallet, etc. And I have to admit that I’ve even caught myself putting the milk on the shelf in the pantry, right next to the cereal box. Some forgetfulness is funny; we laugh and tease each other about it. But other types of forgetfulness can be dangerous. For those with a serious medical condition, forgetting to take medicine can be life threatening. Forgetfulness can also be costly. We once left...

The motto, “good is the enemy of great” applies as much to a church’s small groups as anything else. Many churches aim too low. The reason for this is not that small groups don’t provide many benefits for churches, but that they provide so many. It is easy to focus on the lesser benefits rather than the best ones. The unfortunate result is that people do not grow and are not served to the extent that they could be if the church leaders directed their small group ministry toward what they can do best. What are some benefits of small groups that are “good” but not “great”? Small groups are good for assimilation An obvious benefit of small groups is that it gives you a place to plug new people. This is often referred to as “closing the back door” of the church. Without a place where you can d...

We all know what it’s like to do the right thing for the wrong reason. But what about the reverse? Have you ever done the wrong thing for (what you thought was) the right reason? Your motives were pure, but you still blew it. Motives Matter One thing that separates biblical Christianity from almost every other religion is its laser-like focus on our hearts. Our Creator cares what we do, to be sure, but most fundamentally he cares how and why we do certain things. He’s interested in those intentions that are hidden from human eyes. He’s after our hearts. Psalm 100:2 commands us to “serve the LORD with gladness.” This means that serving God can be an exercise in disobedience. (Yes, you read that correctly.) If our service springs from a heart that isn’t glad in God, it isn’t obedience. It’s ...

Discipleship ministry is people work and people can be difficult. Some folks seem to have the spiritual gift of pointing out everything you and the church could do better. Others have impossibly high expectations that despite your good intentions you never seem to meet. Still others are just plain ornery: cantankerous old (or young) cusses that fit the profile of grumpy goats, better than cuddly sheep. And speaking of sheep, well, you’ve probably read enough about them to know it’s not a flattering metaphor. In short, churches are full of individuals with flawed personalities, irksome quirks, psychological disorders, and good old-fashioned sins. Sometimes, after discussing some difficult situation, my wife and I look knowingly at one other and say (tongue in cheek), “Everybody’s weird exce...

“It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God. The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.” In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of the Bible. We may wince when we read him relate his recent experiences, but we also recognize the ring of truth. Galli was told to cut down on the biblical references in his sermon...

We recently returned from a sweet time of vacation. We live in Chicago, and most of our family lives in Dallas. So my wife, three small kiddos, and I took a two-day road travel, staying overnight in St. Louis both ways. Our kids spent a whole week with grandparents. We went to the Ft. Worth Zoo, Lambert’s Café (home of the throwed rolls) near Springfield Missouri, St. Louis’s City Museum and the Arch. We had plentiful witnessing opportunities during this vacation, which was wonderful. Yet, on this trip, I was reminded of how easy it is to waste that witness. Many of us, me included, have vacationed not just from work but also from our witness. Admittedly, two years ago, our little troop felt convicted of this sentiment mid-week through a very magical vacation in Disney World. We realized t...

In his book Brain Rules, John Medina tells the intriguing story of Dr. Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist, and one of his patients, an elderly woman who “suffered a massive stroke in the back region of her brain that left her with a most unusual deficit: She lost her ability to pay attention to anything that was to her left.” Medina explains the effect this had on her perceptive abilities: She could put lipstick only on the right half of her face. She ate only from the right half of her plate. This caused her to complain to the hospital nursing staff that her portions were too small! Only when the plate was turned and the food entered her right visual field could she pay any attention to it and have her fill.[i] Sometimes I think we’re like this in our spiritual perception. While it’s eas...

Suffering sometimes feels like slipping, sinking, suffocating. As the Psalms testify, suffering can engulf and consume, leaving you groping for a handhold. Suffering can swallow you whole, blocking any light from outside. There’s no way to make suffering not hurt. Some pains simply need to run their course, and some will keep coursing through you long after most people have forgotten about your trial. So Christians need to acknowledge the reality that in this world we will have trouble. But responding to suffering as a Christian takes more than bare acknowledgement. Instead, we need to be able to put it in its place. And that’s exactly what Peter’s first letter helps us do. The entire epistle reflects on the reality of and reasons for Christians’ suffering. But I want to focus on just two ...

I am often overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude to God for placing me in a Christian home with a wise and godly father who diligently taught me the Scriptures; and, although I didn’t know the saving grace of God until I was an adult, there are certain inestimably valuable things my father taught me when I was a teenager that continue to have an impact on me today. One of these was the way in which my father challenged me to read the Proverbs. Perhaps it continues to impact me in a significant way, in part, on account of the fact that there are ten father-to-son talks in the Proverbs (1:8; 2:1; 3:1; 4:10; 5:1; 6:1; 7:1; 23:19; 24:13; and 27:11). These talks reflect something of the concern that a godly father has for his son; but—foundational to that—they reflect what God the Father desire...

Would you feel guilty if you were a millionaire? There is a strand of evangelical thinking that suspects, if not believes outright, that having a lot of money (and in some cases just a little surplus) is something to feel guilty about. John Piper has called people to a wartime lifestyle. He writes, “In wartime we spend money differently—there is austerity, not for its own sake, but because there are more strategic ways to spend money than on new tires at home.”[1] Later he writes, “a $70,000 salary does not have to be accompanied by a $70,000 lifestyle. . . . No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think that our God is good; it will make people think that our God is gold.”[2] Piper has a point, and we need to hear that point. We also want to balance that point with oth...

With all the time and attention focused on Easter a few weeks ago (and rightly so), you could hardly blame people for overlooking the holiday that fell on April 22nd: Earth Day. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day is now observed in over 190 countries by more than 1 billion people every year. Such widespread popularity has led its organizer, Denis Hayes, to call Earth Day “the largest secular holiday in the world.” Instead of scoffing at this holiday, Christians ought to realize the huge teaching opportunity it presents. So, here are three ways to get a clearer understanding of what God says about the world he made and the role he has given us in caring for his creation. 1. Recognize the goodness of God’s physical creation. “In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1)....