Posts 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 ...

God calls every Christian to live like a missionary right where they are....

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....

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....

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....

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...

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.”...

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....

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....

When you’ve been granted spiritual sight in a way that transcends the intellect, no one can convince you otherwise....

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....

Whenever you alter the gospel in any way, you end up losing the gospel. You can’t change it without losing it. ...

Even though ministry will be filled with situations far beyond your ability to handle, look to Jesus to come through in a big way....

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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....

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....

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...

There are four things people often trust in to get them to heaven that don’t actually get them there....

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? ...

Through Jesus, we experience true cleansing....

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. ...

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....

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....

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...

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. ...

God’s deeds reveal what he’s like much more powerfully than anything else....

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....

You can’t really be all about Jesus if you’re not all about his church....

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....

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. ...

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?” ...

The gospel gives us freedom to confess that we don't have it all together....

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....

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. ...

Making disciples isn’t just one task of the church...

Living in community with each other means pursuing close relationships, meaningful conversations, and deep-rooted commitment. It extends far beyond a Sunday worship gathering. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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 5:22-33, 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...

In Ephesians 5:18, Paul tells us to "be filled with the Spirit." But what exactly does that mean?...

"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...

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....

There are four questions we can ask that help us navigate through the theological junkyard that's all around us. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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? ...

God has adopted us so that we’re in his family, we’re known by his name, and we’re loved and totally accepted. ...

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....

Sharing the gospel can be as simple as telling your story with Jesus at the center....

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? ...

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...

In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says that his followers should function as “a city set on a hill”...

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.”...

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 y...

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...

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...

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....

Christian maturity is a lot more than Bible knowledge. It's about growing to resemble Jesus in five areas....