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Sept 12, 2021
Give me all the Bacon & Eggs you Have
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The Biggest Obstacle to Daily Bible Reading
Many Christians have never learned to push through the initial sluggishness they feel and lay hold of Christ on a daily basis.
Keep ReadingWhy We Have Community Groups
Community Groups are the place where we try to cultivate authentic Christian community with one another. That involves pursuing close relationships, meaningful conversations, and deep-rooted commitment.
Keep ReadingA New and Vastly Superior Freedom
If we want to be free, we have to embrace the right limitations.
Keep ReadingThe Hidden Satisfaction of a God-Centered Life
The more you become captivated by God’s beauty, supremacy, and love, the more joy you’ll experience as you live for his glory.
Keep ReadingHeaven Is Better Than You Think
When the Bible about the new creation in Revelation 21:1-8, it’s a lot different than the way we typically think about heaven.
Keep ReadingDo You Worship the Jesus of the Bible?
So often, the "Jesus" we worship isn't the Jesus of the Bible but rather "Jesus" as we've re-created him to be.
Keep ReadingWhat Purposes Does Fasting Serve in the Christian Life?
I’ve understood that fasting is an important part of the Christian life. However, I’ve always wondered why.
Keep ReadingAn Essential Component of Growth To Christian Maturity
We don't acquire the characteristics of a mature disciple simply by gaining Bible knowledge. In order to grow to Christian maturity, we also have to spend time with people who are spiritually mature themselves, observing their life and having formative conversations with them on a regular basis.
Keep ReadingWhat Does It Mean To Be a Mature Christian?
Christian maturity is a lot more than Bible knowledge. It's about growing to resemble Jesus in five areas.
Keep ReadingMay 24
2018
Consider Yourself Authorized
God calls every Christian to live like a missionary right where they are.
Mar 5
2018
The Highest Gospel Blessing
The revelation to the believer that God is his Father is in a sense the climax of the Bible, just as it was a final step in the revelatory process which the Bible records.
Jan 31
2018
How Can We Know the Gospel Is True?
How can people know the gospel’s true? How can people know that Jesus really came from God and died for our sins and rose again from the dead? It’s by the way that gospel message changes us as followers of Jesus.
Jan 12
2018
Jesus' Victory Is Our Victory
In John 16:33, Jesus states, “I have overcome the world.” Victory has been won…right? In one sense, yes, but in another sense, not quite yet.
Dec 8
2017
There's No Greater Love than This...
In John 15:13, Jesus states, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” In other words, the greatest love is the love that gives the most. The more you’re willing to give for somebody, the more you love them. Loving involves giving
Nov 9
2017
The Biggest Obstacle to Daily Bible Reading
Many Christians have never learned to push through the initial sluggishness they feel and lay hold of Christ on a daily basis.
1 John 4:11 is a verse that’s incredibly simple to comprehend, but don’t let its simplicity fool you. It has the potential to fundamentally change your relationships. It says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Aug 17
2017
Why We Have Community Groups
Community Groups are the place where we try to cultivate authentic Christian community with one another. That involves pursuing close relationships, meaningful conversations, and deep-rooted commitment.
Jul 26
2017
More of Heaven Here on Earth
A Christian’s heart is in heaven. That’s what they’re living for, that’s what they’re yearning for, and that’s where they so desire to be that they would literally be counting down the days if they knew how many days it would be.
Jul 6
2017
Faith that Can't Be Shaken
When you’ve been granted spiritual sight in a way that transcends the intellect, no one can convince you otherwise.
Jun 22
2017
A New and Vastly Superior Freedom
If we want to be free, we have to embrace the right limitations.
If you're thirsty for more than this world has to offer, you're not alone. Thankfully, in John 7:37, Jesus gives an invitation to people just like you.
The more you become captivated by God’s beauty, supremacy, and love, the more joy you’ll experience as you live for his glory.
May 25
2017
What Happens When You Change the Gospel?
Whenever you alter the gospel in any way, you end up losing the gospel. You can’t change it without losing it.
Apr 27
2017
Feeding the Five Thousand
Even though ministry will be filled with situations far beyond your ability to handle, look to Jesus to come through in a big way.
Apr 20
2017
God Understands What You're Going Through
Far from being detached from our pain and suffering, Jesus understands from experience exactly what you’re going through and exactly how you feel. He’s suffered the way you’re suffering.
Apr 14
2017
Heaven Is Better Than You Think
When the Bible about the new creation in Revelation 21:1-8, it’s a lot different than the way we typically think about heaven.
When it comes to unsaved family members, never stop praying and never stop pursuing.
Apr 2
2017
Do You Worship the Jesus of the Bible?
So often, the "Jesus" we worship isn't the Jesus of the Bible but rather "Jesus" as we've re-created him to be.
I’ve understood that fasting is an important part of the Christian life. However, I’ve always wondered why.
So often, we only talk about salvation in terms of what God saves us out of: sin, misery, hell, brokenness, and the like. And those benefits are very real, but salvation is also about what God saves us into.
Mar 12
2017
How To Act During a Crisis
When we think of the fact that we only have a limited time to spread the gospel, it changes things. It changes things a lot.
Mar 2
2017
Five Steps for Effective Evangelism
The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4:1-26 is a very practical passage. In this passage, Jesus models for us five practical steps for effective evangelism.
Feb 16
2017
Ten Requirements for Having a Personal Revival
If there is one thing we need, it is revival. But before revival can come to the church, it must come to the individual Christians who comprise the church. This blog post, written by A. W. Tozer and taken from a compilation of his works entitled The Size of the Soul, gives us ten requirements for having a personal revival.
Jan 26
2017
Four Unbiblical Substitutes for Being Born Again
There are four things people often trust in to get them to heaven that don’t actually get them there.
Jan 18
2017
Welcoming the Outsider
How can we turn around after experiencing such adoption through Christ and tolerate any kind of prejudice, sense of superiority, or exclusiveness either in our lives or in the fellowship of our church?
Jan 12
2017
How to Respond to an Uneasy Conscience
Through Jesus, we experience true cleansing.
Jan 5
2017
How to Become a New Person
Just like Jesus made Peter a new person, he offers to make us a new person. It's not us fixing ourselves but rather about Jesus fixing us.
Dec 29
2016
Clarity about Our Purpose
John the Baptizer understood that the reason God had him on this earth was to make Jesus famous. And that’s why we’re on earth as well.
Dec 15
2016
Is Jesus Really God and Why Does It Matter?
If Jesus wasn’t truly God in the flesh, then the blood he shed on the cross would not be sufficient to pay for our sins.
Dec 2
2016
God Is Not What You Think
The reason God is not what you think is because he's holy. What does it mean to say that God is holy? Well, it can mean two things. Probably the more familiar meaning is that God’s pure, righteous, the sum of all moral perfection, and not tainted in the least by sin. But there’s also another meaning, a more foundational meaning. To say that God is holy means that there’s no one like him.
Nov 24
2016
Rejoicing in the Justice of God
God’s justice is a good thing. It’s a quality of God that’s inextricably bound up with his goodness. It’s not a blemish on God’s character or something we need to mask or hide in an effort to make God more acceptable to people.
Nov 18
2016
How We See God Most Clearly
God’s deeds reveal what he’s like much more powerfully than anything else.
Nov 10
2016
Is Your 'God' Too Small?
Do you know why trials so often cause us such a high level of anxiety? Do you know why we often feel so overwhelmed by them, perhaps even on a regular basis? Almost without exception, it’s because our picture of God is too small.
Oct 20
2016
Is Church Really that Big of a Deal?
You can’t really be all about Jesus if you’re not all about his church.
Oct 14
2016
Prayer: The Litmus Test of Our Reliance on God
I once heard someone say that prayer is the litmus test of our reliance upon God. The true level of how much we’re relying on God is seen in our prayer life.
Oct 6
2016
Not Just a Memorial
When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it’s not simply a memorial service like we might hold for heroes who have died. It’s actually more of a celebration as we eagerly anticipate seeing Jesus again.
Sep 15
2016
Overlooking Offenses against Us
Whenever someone sins against you, you might find it helpful to ask you yourself this question. “What’s stopping me from simply overlooking this offense?”
Sep 7
2016
The Freedom to Confess
The gospel gives us freedom to confess that we don't have it all together.
Aug 24
2016
Why Do We Have a Church Membership Covenant?
We have a church membership covenant because Jesus tells us to love each other just as he's loved us (John 13:34-35), and he loves us with a committed love - a covenant love.
Aug 18
2016
Marks of a Genuine Christian
1 John gives us several marks of a genuine believer. By looking for these things in your life, you can have a relatively good idea of whether you’ve truly been saved.
Aug 10
2016
Overcoming the Drift toward Inward Focus
Making disciples isn’t just one task of the church
Aug 4
2016
What Does Life in Community Look Like?
Living in community with each other means pursuing close relationships, meaningful conversations, and deep-rooted commitment. It extends far beyond a Sunday worship gathering.
Jul 28
2016
How Can We Be Close to God?
Just like an eagle was created to soar in the sky and just like a fish was created to swim in the ocean, we were created to enjoy closeness to God and live as continual worshippers of God. The Christian life is all about experiencing that close communion with God.
Jul 22
2016
Why Join a Church?
There seems to be a movement in our society away from so-called “organized religion.” Churches are regarded by many as relics of the past, and people are increasingly in favor of practicing Christianity entirely on their own. So why join a church? It's because the local church is at the very center of New Testament Christianity.
Jul 15
2016
A Wartime Mentality in Prayer
What is prayer for you? Is it something you use as you go to war or something that you use merely to increase your civilian comforts?
In order to fight against our enemy, we have to understand the mission of our enemy. And in order to understand the mission of our enemy, we first have to understand the mission of God.
In response to America's moral freefall, God calls us to be firm in our convictions but focused in our efforts.
In Ephesians 5:18, Paul tells us to "be filled with the Spirit." But what exactly does that mean?
May 25
2016
How to Experience Real Transformation
We can experience real transformation as we do what Paul says in Ephesians 4:22-24: taking off the old, having our minds renewed, and putting on the new.
May 20
2016
Four Questions to Ask of Every Teaching You Hear
There are four questions we can ask that help us navigate through the theological junkyard that's all around us.
May 13
2016
Ministry for the Masses
For whatever reason, there’s a tendency in many churches for people to view pastors as the ones chiefly responsible for ministry and the rest of believers as mere spectators. Thankfully, Ephesians 4 rescues us from that mentality.
In Ephesians 4:1, Paul helps us steer clear of two ditches on either side of the road: cold intellectualism on one side and shallow emotionalism on the other.
Apr 27
2016
The Incomprehensibility of Christ's Love
Much like the universe, God’s love is immense. It’s immeasurable. It’s utterly beyond our ability to comprehend. And yet, Paul still prays that we’d be able to at least comprehend something of this incomprehensible love.
Apr 20
2016
The Greatest Demonstration of the Gospel's Power
God has designed the church to be a community of people where individuals who are significantly different from one another come together. And as they come together, they display the power of the gospel in a unique way.
But remember: in order to appreciate the cure we first have to understand the sickness. And in order to understand grace, we first have to understand sin and judgment and wrath.
In 1 Peter 1:4, Peter says that we have “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” If that's true, how foolish would we have to be to invest our energy in things that will fade away when we could be investing it in treasures that will last for eternity?
Apr 1
2016
Salvation Is So Much More than Forgiveness
God has adopted us so that we’re in his family, we’re known by his name, and we’re loved and totally accepted.
Mar 17
2016
Will Christianity Be a Relic of the Past?
Don’t let the empty church buildings around Pittsburgh fool you. God is on the move, and he’s truly unstoppable as he works to accomplish his mission.
Mar 10
2016
Telling Your Story with Jesus at the Center
Sharing the gospel can be as simple as telling your story with Jesus at the center.
Mar 4
2016
How to View Life's Detours
What happens when life doesn’t turn out the way we want it to? How do we respond to the disappointments, the inconveniences, the heartaches, the suffering, and the unexpected detours that invariably come with life?
In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says that his followers should function as “a city set on a hill”
Jan 12
2016
God's Call to "Be Yourself"
You’ve probably heard the advice people sometimes give to “be yourself.” It’s commonly given if someone is going in for a job interview, a first date, or something else they’re fretting about. Interestingly, God instructs Christians to do the same thing. “Be yourselves.”
Jan 8
2016
Have You Ever Been Baffled by God?
If you’ve never been baffled by God, you should. So often, we treat God as if he’s basically like us humans, just a few notches better or higher. But according to the Bible, God is holy. In other words, you can’t compare God with anything else because he’s not like anything else. He’s in a category all his own.
If you’re a Christian, it’s likely that there are a number of things God calls you to do that may sometimes overwhelm you. Whether it’s sharing the gospel with someone or helping a fellow Christian through a hard time, you may sometimes feel inadequate, under-equipped, or possibly even tempted to disengage. But think about this: whenever you feel that way, where is your gaze directed
Nov 11
2015
Joy That Can't Be Taken Away
Nov 4
2015
What It Means to be "Born Again"
We don't acquire the characteristics of a mature disciple simply by gaining Bible knowledge. In order to grow to Christian maturity, we also have to spend time with people who are spiritually mature themselves, observing their life and having formative conversations with them on a regular basis.
Oct 26
2015
What Does It Mean To Be a Mature Christian?
Christian maturity is a lot more than Bible knowledge. It's about growing to resemble Jesus in five areas.