God

Is This the Year?

Patricia Hartman
7 Jan 2014
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Is 2014 the year that you are finally going to write that book, buy that house, become that professional or start that business you have been dreaming of? Do you have a dream? Perhaps a more important question is: Has God given you a calling for your life? “Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God” (Ephesians 4:1). You’ve heard pastors describe being “called into the ministry.” But calling does not necessarily mean becoming a pastor or missionary. It may mean opening a […]

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Superhero Depression

Tye Riter
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He had just defeated the enemy in the most spectacular way possible: a double-dog deity dare to prove which god was really true. The prophet Elijah succeeded in exposing Baal as a fraud and Jehovah as omnipotent. He killed 450 prophets of Baal and demonstrated his spiritual authority and power to the king and his people. What happened next? He ran for the hills, afraid of a girl. Of course, this was no ordinary girl. This was Queen Jezebel, the wicked Sidonian princess turned Queen of Israel, overseer of magic arts and the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth. Still, after […]

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Reader’s Digest Christianity

Tullian Tchividjian
8 Dec 2013
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For a while, my parents were getting Reader’s Digest every month while I was growing up. Because they were stored next to the toilet, they were widely read. In each and every issue there was an interview with some celebrity, usually an actor or an athlete. Reader’s Digest‘s favorite kind of celebrity was the “self-made” variety; someone who had come from nothing, preferably a broken home in which the single mother had to work multiple jobs to afford the windows that protected the family from the ceaseless gunfire outside. The interviewers inevitably ended their pieces by asking the celebrity something […]

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Homosexuality and the Gospel

Dr. John Hawkins
7 Dec 2013
one comments

Until recently, Christian ministry Exodus International spent decades both performing and heralding the benefits of reparative therapy, a controversial process that helps a homosexual person to change their sexual orientation to a heterosexual one via therapy. Earlier this year, Exodus International’s director Alan Chambers announced that the ministry was closing its doors and issued an apology to the gay community. An apology means a person feels they have done something wrong. If he felt this ministry was wrong, one could ask: “Is there a right way to minister to the homosexual community or a need to minister at all?” All […]

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God is like Jesus

Knox Seminary
2 Dec 2013
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By: Dr. Jono Linebaugh During a battle on the European continent in 1944, a chaplain came upon a fatally wounded solider. The dying man only had enough life left to ask one question. Starring into the chaplain’s eyes in that final moment before his would forever close, he asked, “Father, is God like Jesus?” Before we rush to the obvious answer to this question, it’s worth pausing to ensure that we hear it at its proper pitch. The question is not simply an intellectual test, a pop quiz asking you to write “true” or “false” next to the statement “God […]

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Freedom in Letting Go

Rick Deal
13 Nov 2013
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Do you ever feel like you need to hide your feelings from God? Have you ever gone to church feeling like you are having the worst week of your life, but put on a smile and acted like everything was fine? Or when something really upsets you, do you feel like you need to calm down and take care of it yourself before you bring it to God? Well, you are not alone. Although we don’t consciously intend it to be this way, when we behave in this manner we are acting on our own strength, and telling God “I […]

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Becoming Real

Knox Seminary
11 Nov 2013
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Dr. Michael Allen Oftentimes we overlook the obvious. We search our houses for glasses we are already wearing. We scan what seems to be the whole cosmos for keys that were right where they should be. And, far more serious, in important discussions about the Christian life, we manage to avoid precisely those passages where the apostle Paul speaks most candidly about the Christian life. I suspect that for most evangelicals, Romans 12-16 is functionally inoperative – these are the missing chapters that we just can’t see (likely because they follow the soaring heights of the first eleven chapters, with […]

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Appreciation through Desperation

Dr. Tommy Boland
8 Nov 2013
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As we enter into the Thanksgiving season, have you taken any time to examine your heart to see just how much you appreciate what God in Christ has done for you? We can be so busy working to get through the day that we can overlook and neglect to acknowledge what God has done, and is doing for us daily. As a pastor I have discovered, in coaching individuals from all walks of life over the years, that the degree of our appreciation will always reflect the degree of our previous desperation! Here is a wonderful example of this biblical […]

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appreciation

Tattooed By Iniquity No Longer

Cory Nickols
7 Nov 2013
one comments

What comes to mind when you see a person covered in tattoos? A person that has had a rough life; someone that has taken the road of hard knock and a path of pain and agony? Or perhaps someone who has been rebellious and possibly pushed aside by society? If we are not careful, we may judge a book by its cover while failing to understand what the content inside the book really reveals. The Bible says, “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things […]

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What Binds Up Broken Relationships

Tullian Tchividjian
6 Nov 2013
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It doesn’t matter where you live, what you do for a living, or how you spend your free time, you have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience the wreckage of broken relationships. Infidelity, divorce, misunderstanding, fragmented workplaces, even death…these things touch us all, even in the “safe haven” of church. Broken relationships are everywhere. But what breaks them? And how can they be restored? This is the question taken up by James in the fourth chapter of his epistle. James is a “horizontal” book, in that it is primarily concerned with the love that people ought to have and show […]

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