Don’t Be a Prig I HAVE A COLLEGE FRIEND named Caleb. His parents, both college professors, divorced when Caleb was only two years old. They each announced they were gay. Caleb’s mother fell in love with a woman at work. Caleb’s father fell in love with a man at work....

https://youtu.be/fVCd71hfswg

I AM NOT SAYING I’m an attorney. I mean, I didn’t go to law school. I did, however, watch a bunch of episodes of Law & Order. I even took notes. I walked into the courtroom ready to yell, “I object!” and to whisper, “Can I approach the bench, your honor?” with a...

It is commonplace in all the churches to call Christianity a religion of grace. It is a truism of Christian scholarship that grace, far from being an impersonal force, a sort of celestial electricity received like a battery charge by “plugging in” to the sacraments,...

In Luke 7, we read the powerful story of a woman anointing and washing Jesus’ feet with her hair, tears, and perfume. This scene is so moving that many of us gloss over a key detail: Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus to his home for dinner, and Jesus went. Similarly,...

IF YOU HAD TO NARROW IT TO ONE, what emotion would best describe how you feel right now? Depending on the research you look at, there are anywhere from six to thirty-four thousand emotions you can experience. I won’t list all thirty-four thousand here. You probably...

Your transformation is possible not because you are empowered to do better but because you have died with Jesus. Not only was the penalty of your sin broken once and for all. So was the power of your sin and its control over your life. The enemy is now a defeated foe,...

https://youtu.be/3BZoeOUCKDA

I told you about one of my first jujitsu rolls when I unknowingly challenged a higher belt who punished my face for disrespecting him. Well, here’s the rest of the story: After that first fight, I started winning. And winning. And winning. I rolled against a champion...

It was the Friday night before the Australia Day (which is Australia’s equivalent to the USA’s July 4th) weekend holiday. My wife, Steph, and I were inside an old-school bar where the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted black—because, quite simply, it’s easier to...

Not only did Jesus come as the Hedge-Breaker, but he told his followers that they were to devote their lives to his project. In his most famous prayer he said we are to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. your kingdom come, your will be done on earth...

Once, when discussing the nature of salvation with a skeptical intellectual named Nicodemus, Jesus made a claim the skeptic thought was ridiculous—that people need to be “born again” before they can enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus challenged, “Why would that be...

https://youtu.be/dXvWpIOezV4

The seventh reason I believe that the Bible is the very Word of God is transmission. The Bible’s purity and preservation throughout the centuries is nothing short of miraculous. Do you remember the kids’ game telephone? You get nine or ten children together and the...

Nathan Campbell, an Australian pastor and blogger, came up with the phrase, “Evangelism in a skeptical world is basically a team game.”12 We need to do evangelism together, as a team, playing off the same playbook. Nathan showed me that in 1 Thessalonians 1:4–10,...

https://youtu.be/1KYIifD1y-0

Understanding what it means to identify with Jesus’ death is so critical for our transformation process that Paul explained exactly what Jesus was doing between the time He died on the cross and was resurrected from the grave. He uses some ancient warfare language no...

People often ask me, “Why can’t we just evangelize the same way Billy Graham did?” What’s wrong with a simple twenty-minute Bible talk? The hidden assumption here is that if it worked for Billy, it should work for us. Perhaps there’s also the feeling that we’re...

Do you believe in divine judgment? By which I mean, do you believe in a God who acts as our Judge? Many, it seems, do not. Speak to them of God as a Father, a friend, a helper, one who loves us despite all our weakness and folly and sin, and their faces light up; you...

https://youtu.be/b24aMN-WDsw

An American friend once dismissed this whole approach to evangelism as “friendship evangelism.” That’s when I realized I was a naive Australian who had unknowingly stumbled into an American minefield—one that distinguishes “friendship” evangelism from “proclamation”...

Previously, I asked you, What do you most need to do to have what you want most? Now I want to flip the question to this: What do you most need to stop doing to have what you want most? We are going to learn how to start and stop habits. To begin, let’s identify the...

I’ve known many people who talk a lot about change but can’t quite pull the trigger to make it happen—alcoholics who swear they are going to quit drinking right after the next drink, or would-be exercisers promising to start back at the gym next week, next month, or...

When I arrived at the boarding gate, only two other people were waiting to board the late-night flight from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Charlotte, North Carolina. One was a gentleman I estimated to be two hundred years old. The other was a mysterious, brooding young...

The Proximity Principle ON A HOT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DAY, I sat on the curb of a street just down from Skid Row and listened to a “one at a time” story about a sweet elderly lady from the Midwest who got lost in South Central LA. She was wandering down a back alley...

One way to make friends is simply to get to know your neighbors. For a while, my wife and I were renting. We moved frequently. Over time, we developed a simple routine that we still use whenever we move into a new house. First, we visit all our immediate...

https://youtu.be/EgnXBqFqJUg

There is no such thing as Christian work. That is, there is no work in the world which is, in and of itself, Christian. Christian work is any kind of work, from cleaning a sewer to preaching a sermon, that is done by a Christian and offered to God. This means that...

Hudson Taylor was a missionary to China in the 1800s and, by almost all accounts, an unusually fruitful and effective servant of God. He was known for an unwavering commitment to his calling, making great sacrifices, and tirelessly working to bring people into a...

Seeking to understand revival is like attempting to comprehend the Trinity. We cannot fathom the triune nature of God because He is divine and we are not. People display supreme human arrogance when they insist they will not accept the gospel claims until they...

I have a bit of training in the martial arts. I am very familiar with Daniel LaRusso aka the Karate Kid and the Cobra Kai dojo. I can wax on, wax off with the best of them. Given an opportunity, I can sweep your leg so fast your head will spin. For about fifteen...

Maybe you’re like me when my professor looked at me with disdain, as though I had thrown my brains in the trash to be a follower of Jesus. Or maybe you’re like so many people that I meet who have unconsciously bought into the “who can trust a 2000-year-old book to...

St. John’s twice-repeated statement, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16), is one of the most tremendous utterances in the Bible—and also one of the most misunderstood. False ideas have grown up round it like a hedge of thorns, hiding its real meaning from view, and it is no...

https://youtu.be/XPwF00t1c-8

Midlife Crisis Meets Evangelism Paul was married and had young children. He was successful in his work. He was financially independent. He was secure in his Christian faith. What was his next step? Paul did what any man in his position would do—he bought that loud,...

The non-Christian world raises many intellectual and philosophical objections to Christianity, but much of the dialogue about our faith in our society centers on character issues. Many people perceive Christians as judgmental and condescending. Some point to the...

People can have the same goals yet get vastly different results. No married couple starts out saying, “We’re just hoping to endure the next fifty years. We may hate each other the whole time, but it’s fine as long as we don’t get divorced.” No. Every marriage begins...

The aged apostle was banished to the desolate isle of Patmos, exiled for the crime of spreading Christianity. The powerful Roman Empire was seeking to obliterate the Christian movement. The apostles Paul and Peter had already met violent deaths under the sadistic...

Typically, as Christians, we have two separate universes of friends. We have a universe of Christian friends, and we have another universe of non-Christian friends. We keep these two universes separate from each other. When our Christian friends go to the movies, we...

But there is one line that lies at the heart of the book’s story—and at the heart of your story as well. It is spoken when the story begins and when it ends. It is a kind of prayer. In fact, it is the greatest prayer Jesus himself ever prayed. If we were ever able to...

Myopia is nearsightedness, the inability to see clearly at a distance. One of the reasons many Christians do not experience the life-change they envision is their overdeveloped focus on immediate, up-close motivations. Sometimes they want to be more Christlike because...

A second thing that convinces me Jesus was not an impostor is the evidence for his resurrection from the dead. Looked at objectively, on the surface, the case for Jesus’s resurrection is among the most-compellingly documented events in history. Nothing else can...