When God gets involved, it doesn’t mean everything will be safe. It just means everything will matter.

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.

Unity in the church comes when suffering on behalf of one another becomes not just a risk we’re willing to take, but the life-giving privilege that only Jesus can offer.  

Paul's purpose in Ephesians 2:8-10 is to explain how salvation comes about. What is of God? What is of us? Paul helps us see in this power-packed passage.

God’s purpose for every believer is reconciliation in Christ for all time. Therefore, if you’re in Christ, your life is absolutely massive, with a glorious destiny. I wonder if you believe that? 

Our greatest need is to hear from God. Without his voice we are lost, wondering what life is all about. We don’t know who we are, why we’re here, or what we’re for. But God is not silent. He has been speaking since the foundation of the world. And what he’s been telling us all along is that he is God, we are his people, and he loves us despite everything that seems to prove otherwise.

Idolatry is the most widespread and contagious sin throughout human history, and the only hope we have of a cure is found in Jesus Christ.

There is a spirit behind every religious message. John tells us it’s either from God or from the Antichrist. What should we believe? Such an important question, isn’t it? What we believe forms what we worship, and what we worship forms who we become. So, John tells us not to believe every spirit.

Our path out of worldliness is to travel further into the love of God. Jesus is not asking us to sacrifice joy. He’s commanding us to enter it.

Acts 24is the story of two trails: the obvious one, Paul’s trial in verses 1-23, and the easy-to-miss-one, Felix’s trial in verses 24-27. But this also shows us the reality of two spiritual trials: how we put God on trial, and how God puts us on trial.

In those moments as we trust God and take the next step, we’re doing the same thing Paul was doing, and that Jesus was doing. We’re following the Spirit to testify to the gospel of God’s grace.

We give ourselves to God, entrust our lives to him, and wait for him to set it all right. In between, we labor and love and serve and give, and as we do, we experience what only God can do inside of us, inside our community, and, we pray, outside in the world around us.

Psalm 23 is David’s proof of God’s compassionate nature in two metaphors. First, he shows us that God is not a distant, breakfast-enjoying Shepherd but a never-leaving, never-neglecting, caring one. Secondly, he’s a Friend, welcoming us into his lavish home.

If we’re willing to go to the low place, to call ourselves evil, to identify in the first person with David, that we have sinned—then we can receive with David the same grace that David received from God, and we can have the joy of salvation.

Paul says there’s one thing he does now: know Jesus. Paul did lots of things, but one thing defined him, and one thing only. And he’s calling us to imitate him. The most important thing we can do this year is to know Jesus.

When we see what God has done, we respond in thanksgiving and praise. We enter his gates with thanksgiving not because we’ve worked up enough gratitude to do so, but because we’ve seen enough of God that we can’t help but do so. Thanksgiving is all about responding.

What we believe about Jesus will determine what we believe about everything else. The clearer we see the gospel, the clearer we see the world as it really is.

When we are grabbed by the gospel we sit in amazement at the work of God. Becoming a Christian is not coming to a set on ideas or behaviors. It’s coming to a person. Have you ever noticed how many times the Bible retells the story of God’s work among his people? Why is that? It’s because no matter how many times we hear it the grace of God never gets old.

Here’s the truth about our future. We who believe are on our way to heaven. And the more people that we bring the good news to in our lifetime only sweetens the experience. We want to see as many people as possible come to love Jesus because he is worth it. All the suffering we endure for his sake is worth it. We are here because we are willing to lay down our lives so that others may find Jesus.

The kind of church Jesus is building is founded on gospel-doctrine and shaped into gospel-culture. And as we fall down at his feet in amazement of who he is, he will reach out his right hand and comfort us through his Spirit. We can experience gospel-doctrine and gospel-culture together because Jesus is alive and active. We can walk in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit if we will be open to the Lord. God fills open hearts with himself.