Three Easy Ideas If the Word Evangelism Scares You In the post Are You Reluctant to Invite Friends to Church? we looked at the New Testament church and saw that people first invited others to follow Jesus. Then they went to church. Therefore, we shouldn’t invite people to go to church with us until after […]
Today’s passage: John 20:1–18 Focus verse: Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18) Although Mary Magdalene shows up in each of Jesus’s four biographies, we know little about her. What we learn from Scripture is that Jesus casts seven demons out of her. Though people debate […]
How We Live Out Our Faith Reveals How Much It Means to Us When we follow Jesus and give our life to him, we don’t need to do anything to earn our salvation or merit his good will. Eternal life is a gift he gives freely to us. Yet receiving it merits a response. How […]
May Our Life Honor God and Be an Example to Others Integrity is largely missing in our world today. It looms as an out-of-date concept. Many even mock it as restrictive, limiting our desire to act however we want. Integrity is an unwavering adherence to moral principles and ethical behavior. It’s being honest. It’s sound […]
Not Everyone Can Be a Missionary, but Everyone Can Support Missionaries We’ve talked about four places—or ways—to be a missionary for Jesus. How does the idea of a short-term mission trip fit into Jesus’s command to be his witness (Acts 1:4-8)? Or his instruction to go make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20)? It doesn’t. At best a […]
Make Disciples of all Nations In the oft-quoted passage that wraps up the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20). In doing so, they—and we—are to be a missionary for Jesus. We see this repeated in the book of Mark (Mark 16:15-20). In the parallel […]
We Can’t Witness for Jesus When We Sequester Ourselves on Sunday Mornings Just before Jesus leaves this world to return to heaven, he instructs his followers to go into the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). In an expanded version of this incident, Jesus tells his followers to wait for Holy Spirit power and then […]
Make Sure Your Faith Community Focuses on the Right Thing We need to examine the purpose of church. Why do we meet each week? What are our goals when we come together? What should our focus be? Though people will give various answers, the responses fall into two broad categories: ourselves and others. Church Is […]
We Must Take Care What We Put in Our Minds for They Drive Our Attitudes and Actions We talked about why we need to be careful with what we say. Then we shared some biblical tips to guard our thoughts, since what we think about often flows out of our mouth. Let’s consider some thoughts […]
We Demonstrate That We Follow Jesus through the Things That We Do I’ve written that we should treat love like a verb. I also suggested that we’ll do well to view Christian as a verb and not so much a noun (and certainly not an adjective). We should do the same thing with faith. Yes, […]