conversion on Opportunities

The opportunity for conversion is brief, and our lives are littered with missed opportunities.

History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...

This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide Road Trips II . For more Summer Settings sermon guides, click below. Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered A...

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...

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covena...

Preaching Commentary Introduction This is a well-known passage full of well-known phrases, and yet reading and meditating on the text continues to offer fresh understandings and applications. John ...

Introduction This is a well-known passage full of well-known phrases, and yet reading and meditating on the text continues to offer fresh understandings and applications. John 3:1-17 is the account o...

A man needs three conversions: first of the head, then of the heart, and finally of the pocketbook.

The heavens were opened to show us that our baptism will open the heavens for us. God is made accessible to us. We can know the Unknowable. We can be changed. A good work is done in us, and we have th...

Summary The lectionary texts since Easter have focused on the accounts of the spread of gospel after Pentecost. There has been opposition in Jerusalem, to the point of imprisoning apostles. But the b...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

People go through three conversions: The conversion of their head, their heart, and their pocketbook. Unfortunately, not all at the same time.

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...

Summary The gospel has been spreading in Acts and the gospel is meeting resistance, with apostles being imprisoned. By the Holy Spirit, they are released from jail. The Spirit then instructs them to ...

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his messag...

So while conversion is the most important step in the journey, involving a fundamental change in our identity, life transformation is the end goal.

To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys...

David (Yonggi) Cho would go on to lead what is recognized as the largest church in the world (the Yoido Full Gospel Church), but his spiritual journey began far from Christianity. Raised as a Buddhist...

Conversion does not make us perfect, but it does catapult us into a total experience of discipleship that affects - and infects - every sphere of our living.

Billy Graham had a weekly radio show titled The Hour of Decision. Normally it was a tape recording of the service and message he’d given at a recent evangelistic rally. And at the conclusion of every ...

Only with “gentleness and reverence” will people be able to see, verify, and be persuaded to respond to what we have to say.

It costs something to be a real Christian, according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, an Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness ...

There is nothing that more tends to strengthen the faith of the young believer than to hear the veteran Christian, covered with scars from the battle, testifying that the service of his Master is a ha...

The two thieves appear to be representatives of two opposing directions. One of them founders on the cross; the other is raised up by it. The story of the repentant thief does not teach that every sco...

Though conversion may be pinpointed to a moment, salvation is a process that continues over a lifetime. I am still being saved from old ways of thinking and behaving and am coming to new understanding...

Can the west be converted?

The new life is life "in Christ".

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Inexpressible Things This chapter of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence is rich indeed, revealing so much about Paul and his relationship to the Corinthian church, a church which he himself founded. Bu...