It was heterosexual, not homosexual; monogamous, not polygamous; lifelong, not temporary. It was pure, without adultery; faithful, without abandonment; loving, without abuse. It was also fruitful, not futile, fulfilling God’s primary purpose: “Be fruitful, and...

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in...

We don’t know how God revealed the birth of Christ to the Magi. Matthew simply says that He gave them the sign of “His [Christ’s] star in the East.” The identity of that star has stirred perhaps more speculation over the years than has the identity of the men who saw...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYdaz1stV7k&t=664s

Let’s just start off by saying this. This psalm (and the Bible in general) says that being downcast is not something that just happens to spiritual midgets; it also happens to spiritual giants. It happens to everybody. I mean not just a little blue but dissolved,...

The apostle John, by the Spirit, wrote, “God is love,” and some have taken his words to be a definitive statement concerning the essential nature of God. This is a great error. John was by those words stating a fact, hut he was not offering a definition. Equating love...

A number of Bible passages make it clear that God regards conception as the moment at which personhood begins. Job 10:8-12 and 31:13-15, for example, attribute divine value and human qualities to the unborn fetus. Psalm 139:13-16 similarly exalts God for His creative...

My life was forever changed when we had a couple over to play games one Friday night. We laughed, we played, we enjoyed some homemade coffee cake. Just a normal night of game playing, Diet Coke and coffee cake from one perspective. From another perspective a night...

It was shocking news in 2017—a medical doctor and athletic trainer at Michigan State University was charged with sexually assaulting 150 female athletes, mostly gymnasts. After lengthy court appearances and trials, the doctor was found guilty and sentenced to up to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9TLCyp5ISM   I have just completed a nine-session Bible study based on Francis Chan’s new book, Letters to the Church. It is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions, as well as part of my Good Questions Have Groups...

https://youtu.be/UQf_g1ygE5s

The song “We Three Kings of Orient Are” is a minor Christmas carol. Yet “We Three Kings” has flaws, even in the title: the Magi were not kings, and Matthew never says they were a trio. No one knows how many there were. Matthew simply tells us, “After Jesus was born in...

I am positively sure after many years of observation and prayer that the basis of all of our trouble today, in religious circles, is that our God is too small. When he says magnify the Lord, he doesn’t mean that you are to make God big, but you are to see Him big....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX7HjbYOOjQ I have just completed a nine-session Bible study based on Francis Chan’s new book, Letters to the Church. It is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions, as well as part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking...

Imagine you find yourself stranded on a deserted island with nothing but a copy of the Bible. You have no experience with Christianity whatsoever, and all you know about the Church will come from your reading of the Bible. How would you imagine a church to function?...

While he was in college, my friend Ken Davis delivered a talk to his speech class on the law of the pendulum. This law says that when a free-hanging weight swings back and forth, it will swing a shorter and shorter distance due to the effects of gravity and friction....

https://youtu.be/vTuj_QcrE6E?t=420 I write Bible lessons designed to make it easy to double. If you can read 20 questions, you can lead a small group. See...

Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self- existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and...

I bought a half-dozen new books to supply you with some great material for a Christmas lesson. Best of all, it is free. Click here. If you like this lesson, you might subscribe to Good Questions Have Groups Talking. Church subscriptions are as low as $10 per teacher...

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Christ died for our sins of racism. His work on the cross put racism to death. The redemption of mankind and the earth will include the redemption of human relationships and the uniting of different people groups in Christ. Racist groups that purport to be Christian...

I once heard a story about a mother who got a call from school saying her young daughter was ill. She hurried to pick up her child and then called the doctor. But the doctor’s schedule was already overbooked that day. He could see the child the following morning, and...

Most likely, the magi came from Persia. By the way, magi is the root of our word “magician.” These magi probably were not magicians in the way we think of that term. They were likely part of the priestly class within the Zoroastrian religion—respected court advisors,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Lkdpy1rlw

God’s holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear God’s power and admire His wisdom, but...

You’d have to search long and hard to find a more unlikely hero than Desmond Doss, the real-life subject of the 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge. And you’d be equally hard-pressed to find a better representative for the theme of this book: how to live as an Overcomer. Born in...

https://youtu.be/s1sqPnVojLY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6spnmmI8Qac