Joyful Fatigue

When I was a child my father insightfully prepared for life when he said, “Son, life is hard and then you die.” This “salt of the earth” axiom has proven true over and over again in my life, at least the first half (and I anticipate the second half coming to fruition...

The Two-Advent Messiah

Coming out of the Christmas season, we have been reminded of the reason Jesus came. Sometimes we call it the advent season because we commemorate Christ’s advent (arrival) two thousand years ago. But let us remember that Immanuel is not a one-advent Messiah. The...

The Promise of Christmas

One of my favorite Christmas hymns has a line, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.” The story of Christmas is about God’s promises. The first promise goes back before the manger, before the wise men, before all the prophets—even before sin entered the world....

The Church’s One Foundation

The concept may seem basic, but the longer I’m a Christian and the longer I’m a pastor, the more confusion I see in practice and hear in popular Christian teaching about the church. Who talks about the church being the bride, the betrothed of Christ with whom He’s...

Belonging to Christ

The Scriptures teach that Christians belong to Christ. He owns those whom he has bought with his own blood, and those who have believed in him are at home in His eternal family. This reality is expressed in various ways throughout the New Testament, but one of the...