christian living on Assumptions

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

Barbara Brown Taylor recounts her first experience with caving, the exploration of caves that are not prepared or made easily accessible for inexperienced explorers. Her guides gave her a bit of helpf...

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by.

We are a long time in learning that all our strength and salvation is in God.

In Christianity faith in the Mediator is not something optional, not something about which, in the last resort, it is possible to hold different opinions, if we are only united on the ‘main point’. Fo...

Heavenly Father, we stand in awe of Your creation. You are the master of design. You know the change of seasons, You know the orbit of planets, and You know exactly what human beings were made for: a ...

We shall now have a full definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, ...

I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What . Miller took this point to an even further extreme. In his book, he tells a story about one occasion when he was speaking to a class at...

Lord, sometimes it’s so difficult to place our trust in you. You make incredible promises to us in your word. You say that through your power, we’ll be able to do even greater things than Jesus did in...

Now faith is not just a cognitive affair: its being “sealed upon our hearts” is a matter of will and affect; it is a repair of the madness of the will that is at the heart of sin. Still, it is at leas...

That which distinguishes Christianity has not been stolen. For what makes Christianity absolutely distinct is the identity of our God. Which God we worship: that is the article of faith that stands be...

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

Sisters and brothers, our plans are always limited. But God’s plans never are. So go out into the world with the assurance of Jesus’ presence, the vision of God’s eternity, and the compassion of the H...

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was mean...

But we must add at once that the pious will not cease from good works simply because it is impossible to gain any merit by them. Rather, the greater our faith, the more and greater our works…. For sin...

Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.

In his book, A Peculiar Glory , John Piper provides an illustration of the kind of faith we are called to. This is no “blind faith,” in which we are supposed to simply believe without using our minds...

Christianity at its core is not about subscription to a theological system or the authority of a sacred text or ethical perspectives, although they are all important. Christianity at its core is about...

Prayer of Adoration Living and present Lord: You often surprise us, coming when we least expect it; or, You simply fold back the curtain to show us You’ve been there all along to give us hope and to ...

Lord God Almighty: our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer: There is no place where You are absent. There is no corner of our world that’s hidden from You. There is nothing about us You do not know, no ac...

Loving God ~ Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We are a people who are waiting: waiting to celebrate Messiah’s birth; waiting to see what this day–and every day–holds as Your blessings for us; and waiting ...

Our loving Father, You’ve loved us from everlasting to everlasting. While looking into the future we see only mist and shadows—you see it all with clarity and precision. That which we can only guess a...

In his insightful book, Delighting in the Trinity , Michael Reeves shares an interesting point of connection between the Protestant understanding of sola grati discovered by Francis Xavier during...

Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter our condition; you experience our sorrow and our joy ... and redeem them. By Your Holy Spirit, you carry us along: in crisis and celebration, in despair and acco...

Jesus, you are our peace You proclaim it You create it You bring us near Without you there is No safety No belonging No nurturing No identity rooted beyond this dust Without you we are Anchorless St...

I recently visited a missions school at a large church in Waco, Texas, and decided to try a similar test in a class-sized proportion. “Tell me,” I said to the group, “what is the gospel?” A young lady...

New Testament theology is ‘inherently self-involving as it summons the reader to believe, confess, obey, and understand the entirety of one’s existence—both her or his thinking and willing—in light of...

No sign that ever was given To faithful or faithless eyes Showed ever beyond clouds riven So clear a paradise. Earth’s creeds may be seventy times seven And blood have defiled each creed But if such b...

Leader: What do you believe concerning “the Holy Spirit”? People: First, that the Spirit, with the Father and the Son, is eternal God. Leader: Second, that the Spirit is given also to me, so that,...