How do you react when someone steals your glory? When someone steals your shine? Let’s say you’ve been working at your job for 10 years. You’ve showed up, worked hard, and done your best. You’ve had your eye on a promotion for a while. You’ve outlasted everyone else who would be eligible for it. But then your company hires a…
Month: July 2022
Healthy Churches Give Sacrificially
All the saints of a healthy church bear the burden of ministry, and all saints of a local church should give sacrificially of their time, talent, and treasures. And brothers and sisters, we give sacrificially of our time, talent, and treasure because we belong to God and because we are motivated by grace. 2 Corinthians 8:1-7:We want you to know,…
How Do You Live for Jesus?
God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever does not believe, Jesus says, is condemned already (John 3:16-21). What merits this condemnation? If you are condemned to death by the state, it’s because you have done something to merit it. So, what is the judgment that has brought…
Healthy Churches Know They are Not Alone
A healthy church knows they are not God’s only gathering of Christians in their community. Brothers and sisters, in 500 years when people look back on us today, what will they see that we could not see? What are the egregious mistakes we’re making that we don’t know we’re making? What are our blind spots? I can’t really know. Here,…
How do you enter God’s Kingdom?
A smart, well-known, and well-liked leader named Nicodemus had seen and heard of this Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus recently burst onto the scene at Passover when he cleared animals and money changers out of the temple. Nicodemus, and surely many others, are somewhat intrigued. So, by night, presumably not to be seen by others, Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He…
Leadership in the Local Church
Servant leadership should mark the leaders of the church. Let’s look at Titus 1 to see this principle in action. Here we find one of a few lists of qualifications for the office of overseer/pastor/elder – the office charged with overseeing the congregation, caring for the people of God, and equipping them for the mission of God. The Apostle Paul…
Jesus is After Wholehearted Worship
Jesus was a disrupter. He won quite a few fans with his display of righteous anger in the temple when he turned over the tables (John 2:13-25). Some of the people who knew the money changing practices were all kinds of shady were probably fired up. Yeah, he gets it! Down with organized religion! Such disrupters can gain a following…
Jesus is the True Temple
So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days.” But he was speaking about the temple…