Articles

Central to any approach to church should be this truth: Jesus Christ has promised His presence to those who gather in His name.

The knowledge of this truth will change both how the leadershi . . .

If the church is indeed a place where we enter into the presence of God, then it would only be natural that we would want to communicate with Him. Just as A.J. Gordon was remiss that he missed the opportun . . .

The early church never gathered without a purpose. The early believers were acutely aware of what was at stake as a result of inactivity. Time was short, and their mission big.

So in Acts 1 when the Apostles remain in Jerusa . . .

“It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:31-32

Very often, we as conservative evangelical Christia . . .

Church life can very quickly become self-centered and self-focused which will lead to a slow death. This does not mean that we should throw out the important task of bringing believers into maturity. But it does raise the question of how we . . .

Human nature migrates toward that which is most comfortable and familiar. This is most certainly the case in worship. Worship in our churches, Sunday after Sunday, begins to have a routine scent that is only a small sampling of the multi-scented aroma of the worship of our God as found in the Scriptures. How then do we go about modifying our worship without it being contrived and fake?

My four-year-old daughter recently asked me what I was going to preach about. I told her, “Jesus.” She responded, “Well, I already know about Jesus.” I thought, “Oh really?!” She knows so little about Jesus. But because we have talked with her about Jesus, her Sunday school class teaches her about Jesus, she thinks she has it down pat. Has she really understo . . .

The church is not a one-man show. It does not consist of a pastor who does all the preaching, all the teaching, all the praying, all the counsel, all the service, and all the leadership. There is simply too much work to do in the Kingdom of God. The church is a body of believers who use their God-given gifts in order to build one another up, reach the world, and thereby glorify the Lord Jesus C . . .

The Lord declares, in Isaiah 56, “My house will be called a house of prayer.” It is this that Jesus quotes as He overturns the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple courts. They had corrupted the Temple by turning its focus from the main purpose of prayer and worship, to a place of commerce. We too, are in danger of getting side-tracked from the main purpose of the church.

In a marvelous little book by A.J. Gordon entitled, How Christ Came to Church, the 19th century pastor at Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston describes a dream he had one night where in which he was preaching to his flock when an unidentified man strolled down the aisle of the church. Gordon’s eyes were drawn to this man as he preached. Intrigued by this stranger, Gordon r . . .

Have you ever met someone famous? If you have, chances are, you were impressed with one of two things. Maybe you got a favorable impression of the famous person because he was, as they say, 'down to earth.' He did not appear to be so full of himself for one so famous. Or on the other hand, you may have had an unfavorable impression of him because he was aloof, and struck you as a bit arrogant. . . .

“The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Timothy 2:2

With these words to his disciple Timothy, Paul puts to words the heart of his ministry, and thus the heart of the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The process described by Paul can be . . .

“…they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king…”
John 6:15

Are you trying to take Jesus by force to make Him king?

We are all prone to try and make Jesus what and who He is not. In John 6, the crowd of five thousand had just been miraculously fed by Jesus’ division (and multiplication) of five loaves and two fish. T . . .

“And He gave some…as evangelists” (Eph. 4:11).

When evangelist Billy Sunday died in 1935, mass evangelism was declared dead by many. No one, it was claimed, would draw the crowds and make converts that Sunday did throughout his ministry. Now that the ministry of Billy Graham has effectively ended, I hear the same murmurings. “Crusade evangelism is dead.&rdqu . . .

Several months ago, I was talking with a woman whose husband was worried about the economy and its impact on them. They owned three houses (at least), two of which were being rented, so were not in danger of being in dire straits. But as I talked with the woman, she spoke words that have stuck with me, and were brought back to my mind as I noticed that one of their houses had shifted from . . .

(Spoiler alert: If you have not found out that Santa Claus is not real, you will not want to read this article)

I have never been one to emphatically reject the use of Santa Claus during the Christmas season. But I was struck recently when I saw a large Santa display on the front lawn of a good Christian family's home. I contrasted that with some of the beautiful manger sce . . .

The beginning of Acts 2 tells us, “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place” (KJV).

In the previous posts about the Pentecost, we looked at some aspects of Pentecost as described in the book of Acts. But most of us are a lot less familiar with the Feast of Pentecost and its connection to the Old Testament. Underst . . .

In the last blog post, we discussed the results of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Peter’s first (brilliant) sermon. The Disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit for the purpose of testifying about Jesus Christ. What follows in the next section of Acts (and really in the whole book of Acts) is a description of other testimony to Christ.

The Apostles are perfor . . .

Today, the Church marks its birthday, Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was sent to the Disciples of Jesus Christ. Whenever Christians begin to talk about the Holy Spirit, you can sense some uneasiness. There has been much bad teaching on the Holy Spirit which must be corrected. But when I think of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, the thing that comes to my mind is expressed in Jesus’ ow . . .

Several states have what are called Good Samaritan laws. These laws are set up to protect “Good Samaritans” who stop to help someone in distress. The law states that if, while ‘helping’ the person in distress, the Good Samaritan accidentally injures or worsens the condition of the person, they are immune from legal action against them.

Apparently, some count . . .

Not all who wander are lost” is a popular nationwide bumper sticker. The quote is attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien, but anyone who has read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy will know that it came, not from the pen of Tolkien, but rather from a Hobbit tune, and expressed the joyful, carefree nature of hobbits to wander the countryside innocently and . . .