The Bible calls us to live with wise urgency. How are we going to do that? By being filled with God himself.

When Christ calls us to himself, he calls us immediately. There is no ramp-up period. We don’t ease into new life with Christ. He starts his work immediately, and he never lets up.

If you’re in Christ, God relates to you not like a king to a servant or a boss to an employee but as a father to a child, with warmth and depth, tenderness and care, attention and intention.

As he began the most important work the world has ever seen, Jesus invited a group of complicated sinners to come along. Discipleship was important to Jesus. His choosing of them, his investment in them, and his deployment of them was the way he changed the world.

Here's what I read in June 2018.

May was the freest month I've had so far this year. I didn't preach during the month, and I was only obligated to write one article. So, how did I fill my time? Well, baseball was one way. The other was reading.

Here are the books I read in May 2018. There were some good ones.

The Christian has a hope that a non-Christian cannot have. It is the hope that everything in this life is meaningful.

At the start of the year, I stood before my church and presented an opportunity for each of us to enter into a daily experience of joy. I held a Bible in one hand and a reading plan in another. 

True grace gives us the backbone to stand up for God’s purpose in the world. We become willing to suffer for the cause of Christ because Christ is the purpose of all human history. He’s the only thing ultimately worth living for. Spreading his gospel of freedom is worth all the bondage of this world.