Christian faith is more than thinking, because the Christian message, the gospel, is much more than an idea. It is not just an idea; it’s a power. The gospel bears fruit in you. It’s a living thing. But how does faith move from being an idea to bein...
The Bible tells us faith begins with thinking. The Bible says faith requires and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost. Nowadays, we’re told by our culture from the tim...
What is faith? What is it made of? How do you know if you have it? How do you lose it? How do you get it back? Hebrews 11 deals with all of these things through specific personal case studies of men and women who wrestled with issues of faith. I woul...
One mark of a supernaturally changed heart is a changed attitude and view of races and cultures. In social relations, grace-changed Christians use their power to serve, not exploit. We’re going to look at this by looking at a dispute that happened i...
Some people say there’s a cultural crisis of integrity. For example, Volkswagen was revealed to have deliberately used software designed to lie about emissions. It was a failure of integrity from one of the biggest corporations in the world. And som...
When the Greeks and Romans met the early Christians, one of the first things that surprised them was how Christians handled suffering. Christianity brought into the world a view and a way of handling suffering that the world had never seen. It was o...
What are the characteristics of a supernaturally changed heart? You can be very moral and active in church and still be an incredibly impatient, bitter person. So we’re looking at what Paul says are the marks of a supernaturally changed heart. And fo...
Most of us know how to restrain a life. We start to get in trouble, so we change. But when the consequences go away, we snap back the way we were. Human nature without supernatural intervention is like a rubber ball that’s squished, but when the pre...
There is nothing that beggars your own sense of wisdom than to study what the Bible says about divine wisdom. Ephesians 5 tells us a lot about wisdom. And it shows us that biblical wisdom puts God in the center in a way that develops three aspects of...
Ephesians 5 talks about light and wisdom. Paul says that because you once were darkness and now are light, you should now expose works of darkness and experience the fruit of light. Then in verse 15, Paul says that we are to walk as wise and not as f...
The essence of Christianity is arguing with yourself. What makes you an effective Christian is that you’re continually arguing with yourself, and you’re winning the argument. Because of what Christ did, God can restore the world and restore everythin...
Christianity is never a mechanical thing. And the church is not a morality agency—it’s a regenerating agency. The real goal of the do’s and the don’ts in the Christian life is always character—growing into God’s holy people. The church does bring abo...
Whenever God turns to you, if you believe in him, all he sees when he looks at you is complete beauty and sweetness. Jesus Christ offered himself up and fulfilled all of the obligations we owe God, so he has completely satisfied God. God sees nothing...
If you look at the particulars Christian teachings, the particulars don’t look that different from many other ethical systems. The difference is that Christianity is never interested in moral behavior simply as moral behavior. In every instance, putt...
Christianity has an amazing approach to lying and to anger that almost nobody else has. For truth-telling, it says truth must always be told with love. And for anger, it says, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Paul doesn’t say, “Well if you get angry, it m...
