It’s flu season. It’s a bad one this year. Many of our friends and family members are sick or will be; perhaps we will suffer sickness ourselves. And that is on top of those who suffer other types of illnesses and disabilities; there are always people in our families and churches who have an obvious …
Our church accepted six people into membership yesterday. This is always an encouraging time as we think about what it means to be a church together. It means not just attending a place to get teaching and sing some songs, but being part of a family and serving one another. It involves commitment, and membership …
We are only saved by grace. That is a wonderful truth. We can only be counted as one of God’s people by what Jesus has done for us in his death and resurrection. He paid the debt we could not pay. Jesus took our sins upon himself. All we need to do is trust in …
As part of a recent sermon on false teaching based on Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7, I mentioned that many of the bestselling books in Christian bookstores could be classified as false teaching. There are books that advocate for a non-orthodox and unbiblical view of the Trinity (the Shack), are based on a concept not …
Biblical teaching about the church assumes that there will be a mix of older and younger people present in the congregation. We see instructions directed specifically to older people (like 1 Timothy 5:9-11) and to children (like Eph 6:1-3). There are instructions on how younger people should treat older people and vice versa (1 Timothy …
There are many people who think Christians are uninformed anti-scientific people who believe things disproved by scientists years ago. Richard Dawkins famously said that faith is believing something that you know isn’t true. This prevents quite a few people from even considering the claims of Christianity. Why would you bother? Surely science has proved that …
It all sounds so easy. Come to Jesus, and all will be fine. God does it all; you are saved by grace; it is all about what God does and not what you do. Just trust Jesus, and you’re in! And it’s true. It is wonderful news. The only way to be saved and get …
In my last blog post (which you can read here), I noted that we should be praying to our Father often, making the most of the privilege we have to speak directly to God. We should actually ask and not keep censoring ourselves. God, in his wisdom, will decide which requests to grant and what …
As part of working through the Sermon on the Mount recently, it has struck me how difficult this blueprint for being a disciple really is. It is indeed a narrow and difficult road spent following Jesus. All the values that kingdom people are supposed to hold to are the opposite of what our sinful natures …
Sometimes we can feel like the Christian life is all about trying to stop doing things we shouldn’t be doing. After all, we’re all sinners. God, in his great mercy, often points out our sin to us as we read his Word and hear it explained. We can always do a better job of being …