Over the years, I have learned that the term budgeting has different meanings for different people. I recently read a definition that described a budget as, “An orderly system of living beyond our means.”

What spiritual leader hasn’t drawn encouragement from Nehemiah 2:18? But for that encouragement to be more than an emotional boost, we need specific ways to put it into practice.

Several months after we moved to Lancaster, some dear friends of our family made arrangements for us to move out of our tiny apartment into a real house. Our apartment did not have air conditioning (which makes for rough summers in the desert), and the previous occupants had animals that left the carpets soiled beyond repair. Needless to say, I was excited and thankful to have a home. It wasn’t long before I began decorating it room by room.

True biblical Christianity is far different from what we see in most modern churches. When we read the New Testament, we are brought face to face with the fact that every believer is expected to be a participant, not an observer, in world-wide evangelism.

Nearly every pastor or church leader knows the burden of carrying the financial responsibilities of a ministry.

The local church does not get to choose whether or not it will have a ministry of counseling. Churches are made up of people, and people will always be encountering situations that require biblical direction and guidance.

I’ve known for some years that the Sunday evening service in Baptist churches has been on the decline. But I read a recent statistic by researcher Thom Rainer stating that only 5 percent of churches have a Sunday evening service. That number startled me.

It is wonderful that Jesus Christ blessed those He saved with the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, Who has come to meet all of our needs and to work through us to meet the needs of the world! What an amazing truth! He is a well of living water that springs up to satisfy our inner thirst forever. Let us not lose our grip on this wonderful metaphor and the truth it pictures.

For the Bible-believing Christian, anything that could be called a true advancement will be in a direction leading to basic, New Testament Christianity. So in a sense, it will be going back.

Culture shock is a feeling that can happen to us when we are in cultural situations that are different from our expectations­—usually in a bad way. With this definition in mind, we would guess that reverse culture shock should not exist.