How is the Bible more like a cookbook than a novel?...

How do we store God's Word in our hearts?...

How can we receive the word "with love" if we're just not feeling that way?...

When listening to the Word of God, we need to set aside our skepticism and criticism and receive it from a standpoint of faith....

We may think we know how to read and hear what the Bible says, but the Bible tells us something different....

We don't need to be ready to hear. Sounds happen and we hear them, right? But in order to hear God's Word in an effective way, we have to prepare ourselves to hear it....

Hearing Scripture can be easy, but the kind of hearing that makes a difference actually requires effort....

The Word of God is powerful, but God has given us responsibility to hear it in a way that puts that power to work....

Presbyterian isn't just something we have in our name. It's something we put into practice, including sending one of our pastors to a national gathering of PCA elders....

Preaching the gospel to ourselves is a great practice to help us think and live rightly. But there's a problem with it......

You can feel the panic in the air as the election draws near. But citizens of God's Kingdom should have no part in that fear....

Do short-term mission trips work? They do. If they're done well....

Expectations can lead to conflict - with other people and with God....

The Bible never tells us to apologize. Seriously. It tells us to do something else....

Some final thoughts on the practical need for local church membership....

As a Christian, I'm a member of the body of Christ. Why, then, do we talk about also being a member of a local church?...

When Scripture describes the role of elder, it uses language that cannot be understood without the idea of church membership....

The way Scripture describes the discipline of sinners is only possible in the context of the local church....

Is the church only those who are saved? Or is it everyone that shows up on a Sunday morning? The answer is somewhere in between, and it might be less black and white than we want....

Understanding how the Bible speaks of church membership requires a different way of using Scripture than we might be used to....

Church buildings are significant, but they are still only buildings. The true church exists elsewhere....

What does it mean to grow old as a Christian?...

What do a doctor's office, a mechanic's shop, and the Bible all have in common?...

Putting off the old self is less like digital deletion and more like an older technology....

There may be more to Chinese New Year traditions than meets the eye....

Calling January 1st the start of a "new" year doesn't change anything about us or the year itself. And maybe that's a very good thing....

The Christmas story is only half a story if we leave out what Jesus was doing before he was born....

We often see words like "Joy" "Peace" and "Blessing" and Christmastime, but there is one word we do not often associate with the season. And yet it is a very fitting word....

God is loving, but in a way that doesn't always match our demands and expectations. ...

The greatest obstacle to trusting God's wisdom is that we fail to grasp how different God's thoughts are from our own....

If we believe that God is on control of the big things, we have to believe he is in total control of all the small things, too....

Is sadness a sign of immaturity? Can I worship honestly if I'm not happy? Reading the Psalms might suggest that honest worship embraces the whole spectrum of our emotions. ...

Scripture tells us to "regard no one according to the flesh." How does this affect the labels our society encourages us to use?...

What does the pastor of a small Presbyterian church think about while in a room full of Presbyterian pastors in the midst of a debate?...

Are things getting better? Worse? About the same? And what does that mean for how we live as God's people?...

How do those with citizenship in heaven pray for an earthly nation?...

How long should we pray for something? Until we receive an answer. An old prayer request list on the church computer helped me understand that....

What do we do when we hear that popular holiday traditions are connected with paganism? ...

Behind the choices we make are a set of values. Letting worldly values often leads us down a path of exhaustion. Jesus challenges us to choose a different path....

The Bible doesn't teach us to interpret natural disasters as God's judgment on those who suffer from them, but instead calls us to look beyond our circumstances in order to understand true blessing....

Hospitality is a virtue that is commanded and commended throughout Scripture. But what does that word actually mean? We may have come to think of hospitality in terms of entertaining and hosting, but Biblical hospitality looks to God's gracious salvation as its model....

The Christian's approach to their calling - whether in the home, at school, or on the job - is drawn from the way Scripture presents God as one who works. The tasks that fill the majority of our time are not distractions from the spiritual life but are instead one of the ways in which we follow and imitate our Lord....

National tragedies spark national discussions. How ought we, as Christians, participate in the conversations surrounding events like the Las Vegas shooting? The tone and attitude of our message can be just as important as the message itself. ...

Though our culture and our own sin may cause us to be wary of any authorities, God has given leadership to his church, and those leaders exist to bless God's people by following the example of Christ....

There have always been those who challenge historic Christianity by presenting an "alternative" version of the faith. The way that the early church responded to such diversity has a lesson for our own response to the suggestion that our understanding of Scripture is just one of many possible paths....

We live in an age where we each possess more things than most people in history ever have. Why doesn't it make us happy? It is important to remember that contentment has very little to do with how much you possess....

Scripture warns us against being divisive while also warning us to clearly distinguish between true faith and falsehood. When does our need to draw lines become unhealthy?...

Part 1 in a 3-part series on our culture's obsession with staying busy - what that means to our hearts and how Scripture calls us to rebel against it....

We live in a culture that encourages us to be busy. At the root of that tendency is a false belief that our worth comes from how we spend our time. The Sabbath rest challenges this idol in our hearts....

Judges is a violent book. How does that turn our eyes to the grace of God in our own lives? In a world where images of sin and violence are just a click away, why is it important to confront the disturbing stories in the history of God's people?...