April 9, 2023
by Josh Tancordo
One question people often ask us is whether our church can baptize them. Whenever people inquire about this, it always excites us! What a joy it is to hear of a person's desire to profess faith in Jesus and follow his teachings by being baptized!
At the same time, we desire to honor God and serve people well by approaching baptism in a responsible way. One of the ways we ...
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May 24, 2018
by Josh Tancordo
God calls every Christian to live like a missionary right where they are....
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March 5, 2018
by Josh Tancordo
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....
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January 31, 2018
by Josh Tancordo
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....
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January 12, 2018
by Josh Tancordo
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....
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December 8, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
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...
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November 9, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
Many Christians have never learned to push through the initial sluggishness they feel and lay hold of Christ on a daily basis. ...
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September 13, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
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.”...
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August 17, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
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....
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July 26, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: heaven, hope
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....
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July 6, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
When you’ve been granted spiritual sight in a way that transcends the intellect, no one can convince you otherwise....
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June 22, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
If we want to be free, we have to embrace the right limitations. ...
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June 8, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
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....
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June 1, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
The more you become captivated by God’s beauty, supremacy, and love, the more joy you’ll experience as you live for his glory....
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May 25, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: evangelism, mission
Whenever you alter the gospel in any way, you end up losing the gospel. You can’t change it without losing it. ...
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April 27, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: trust in God, mission of God
Even though ministry will be filled with situations far beyond your ability to handle, look to Jesus to come through in a big way....
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April 20, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: suffering
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. ...
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April 14, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: heaven
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....
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April 7, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: evangelism
When it comes to unsaved family members, never stop praying and never stop pursuing. ...
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April 2, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
So often, the "Jesus" we worship isn't the Jesus of the Bible but rather "Jesus" as we've re-created him to be....
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March 21, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: fasting
I’ve understood that fasting is an important part of the Christian life. However, I’ve always wondered why. ...
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March 16, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: worship, communion with God, seeking God
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. ...
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March 12, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: evangelism
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. ...
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March 2, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: 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....
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February 16, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: 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....
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February 10, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: culture
A prominent Notre Dame scholar and sociologist named Christian Smith did substantial research and came up with a term to describe the basic message of many churches in America, particularly as youth in the church have perceived it. He called it "Moral Therapeutic Deism" or MTD for short. That phrase may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but I promise it's not that complica...
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January 26, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: born again, regeneration, salvation
There are four things people often trust in to get them to heaven that don’t actually get them there....
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January 18, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: adoption, prejudice, social justice
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? ...
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January 12, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: forgiveness, cleansing
Through Jesus, we experience true cleansing....
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January 5, 2017
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: born again, salvation, self-help
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. ...
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December 29, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: John the Baptizer
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....
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December 15, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: deity of Jesus
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....
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December 2, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: holiness of God
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...
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November 24, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: justice of God, goodness of God, hell
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. ...
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November 18, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: knowing God, attributes of God
God’s deeds reveal what he’s like much more powerfully than anything else....
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November 10, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: suffering, sovereignty of God, anxiety
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....
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October 20, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: church
You can’t really be all about Jesus if you’re not all about his church....
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October 14, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: prayer, faith, C. S. Lewis
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....
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October 6, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: Lord's Supper, second coming
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. ...
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September 15, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: forgiveness, conflict resolution, peacemaking
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?” ...
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September 7, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: gospel, confession, conflict resolution
The gospel gives us freedom to confess that we don't have it all together....
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August 24, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: love, 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....
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August 18, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: salvation, holiness, assurance, conversion, fruit
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. ...
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August 10, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: discipleship, evangelism, mission, multiplication
Making disciples isn’t just one task of the church...
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August 4, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: spiritual growth, fellowship, life in community, Christian community, missional communities
Living in community with each other means pursuing close relationships, meaningful conversations, and deep-rooted commitment. It extends far beyond a Sunday worship gathering. ...
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July 28, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: spiritual growth, theology, knowledge, attributes of God, story of 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. ...
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July 22, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: church, church membership, individualism
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.
...
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July 15, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: prayer, faith, spiritual warfare
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?...
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July 9, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: spiritual warfare, missio Dei, Satan
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. ...
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June 29, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: gospel, evangelism, culture, America, persecution, homosexuality, abortion
In response to America's moral freefall, God calls us to be firm in our convictions but focused in our efforts. ...
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June 26, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: marriage
In Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul paints a picture of marriage that is an alternative to both the feminism and the chauvinism we see and have seen in society. Both feminism and chauvinism are distortions of the beautiful way God intended husbands and wives to relate to each other.
First, he says to wives, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is th...
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June 8, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: spiritual growth, Holy Spirit
In Ephesians 5:18, Paul tells us to "be filled with the Spirit." But what exactly does that mean?...
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June 3, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: holiness, sex, marriage
"Because I told you so." I'm sure you remember hearing that as a child, and if you're a parent, you've probably said that once in a while.
"Why should I do this?" "Because I told you so." "Why should I not do that?" "Because I told you so." That's like the universal trump card parents have whenever their kids ask too many "why" questions. It's probably saved countless par...
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May 25, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: spiritual growth, sanctification, sin, change, repentance
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....
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May 20, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: sin, self-esteem, discernment, Bible, prosperity gospel, charismatic movement
There are four questions we can ask that help us navigate through the theological junkyard that's all around us. ...
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May 13, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: ministry, spiritual gifts, leadership, membership, church
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. ...
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May 5, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: intellectualism, hypocrisy, emotionalism, doctrine, truth, Bible study
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. ...
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April 27, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: love, cross, Jesus
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. ...
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April 20, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: unity, love, peace, community, evangelism
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. ...
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April 13, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: grace, sin, self-esteem, judgment,
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. ...
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April 8, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: heaven, priorities, eternity
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? ...
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April 1, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: salvation, adoption, love of God
God has adopted us so that we’re in his family, we’re known by his name, and we’re loved and totally accepted. ...
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March 17, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: God, mission, culture
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....
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March 10, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: evangelism, gospel, salvation
Sharing the gospel can be as simple as telling your story with Jesus at the center....
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March 4, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: suffering, faith, perseverance
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? ...
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February 17, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
It seems like many peopleChristians and non-Christians alikehave an incredibly misguided view of what it means to be "spiritual." A truly spiritual person is seen as someone who renounces earthly enjoyments in order to devote themselves to higher, more spiritual pursuits.
For example, a spiritual person will be careful not to have too much fun. That would be worldly. Inst...
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January 19, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: gospel, missional living, evangelism
In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says that his followers should function as “a city set on a hill”...
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January 12, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: sanctification, Christian living, holiness
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.”...
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January 8, 2016
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: God, holiness, worship
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....
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December 9, 2015
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: trust, suffering, greatness of God
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 y...
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November 11, 2015
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: joy, forgiveness, redemption, love, church in Pittsburgh
Think back to the last time you lost your cool. What were the circumstances? What did you say? What did you do? What was going through your mind?
Acts 16 records how Paul and were able to rejoice even in the midst of frustrating circumstancescircumstance that were, quite frankly, unjust. After being beaten and thrown into prison without legitimate reason, we read how Paul...
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November 4, 2015
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: church in Pittsburgh, born again, regeneration, salvation, gospel
In John 3:3, Jesus tells a man named Nicodemus "unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," meaning that he can't be a part of God's kingdom in heaven. You may have heard that phrase "born again" before and wondered what it means. People sometimes talk about being "born again Christians."
Being "born again" means that there's a change that's happened withi...
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October 27, 2015
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: discipleship, spiritual growth
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....
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October 26, 2015
by Josh Tancordo
| Tags: discipleship, spiritual growth
Christian maturity is a lot more than Bible knowledge. It's about growing to resemble Jesus in five areas....
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