What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who diedmore than that, who was raisedwho is at the righ...

Yeah, we know. Last week the headline said, Don't Go to Church. What's the real message here, should we go to church or not? Yes, go to church. But don't just go to church. Be the church! That was last week's message. This week, the message centers on the connection between going to church and living in the real world. Many years ago I interviewed for the pastor positi...

Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright.Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.For the word of the LORD is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadf...

Somewhere along the line, you've probably heard someone say, "Don't bother looking for the perfect church. Because if you ever find it, and you JOIN it, then it won't be perfect anymore!" The perfect church doesn't exist, but we're tempted to think that the church that emerged in Jerusalem was about as perfect as a church can be. We romanticize that church. We tend to thi...

To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. Westerners are enamored by size, largest number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun has set on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when the statistics show the quality of the life of the believer is no different than that of the unbeliever. Ravi Zacharias Congregat...

We have been talking about our work of evangelism for a while, so this Sunday I plan to look at the idea of rest. Our sermon text will be Exodus 16, where God first teaches Israel to observe the Sabbath as a way to rest on God's promises. The Sabbath is a difficult topic, because Bible-believing Christians often disagree on how the Sabbath applies to us today. I hope to fo...

My wife Kerra is a teacher. On the first day of class, she communicated something to her students that got their attention, something that will deeply impact their perspective of what school is all about. "My purpose," she says, "is not to fill your heads with information. My purpose is to make your souls rich." That's a very important lesson for students everywhere. But i...

Years ago, in my freshman year of Bible College, I took a course in personal evangelism. Part of the instruction was lecture, but another part of the class involved simulation. We were assigned to get into small clusters, with someone assuming the role of the evangelist, someone assuming the role of the person being evangelized, and someone else assuming the role of the ev...

Knock, knock, knock. Someone was at the door. Probably a salesman. No one else would ever find their way to our house. I was in my first year of ministry. Kerra and I lived in the church parsonage, which was on a lonely road seven miles from the nearest gas station. The church I served didn't have an office, so I established my workplace in one of the bedrooms. Knock, kno...

Each Sunday, we normally recite a question and answer from the New City Catechism. Sometimes we recite a creed together, like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed? Why do we do that? All Christians want to think that their beliefs are of biblically sound doctrine. However, a recent study from LifeWay Research suggests that evangelicals believe several heretical claim...