Christian Living

The next six weeks are some of the busiest on the calendar. Between now and Christmas, life can easily swallow us up in a whirlwind of holiday preparation and activity. Yet, these busy weeks also hold some of the most sacred moments of the entire year…if we will intentionally look for them.

There are many strange and unscriptural ideas abroad about revival and just as many about the “end times.” One harmful combination of such false notions is the idea that there will be no great revivals in the last days, that the eras of awakenings are past, and that we live in a time just before the second coming of Christ when no revival can be expected.

Have you ever thought of your trial as a stewardship from God? It is. And when stewarded properly, God will use your trial to give you some of His greatest gifts. God has given us an incredible, amazing resource with which to steward our trials. It’s called grace.

We all hit points of plateau in our Christian life—times when we don’t seem to be growing like we wish or when we are struggling to gain momentum in spiritual growth. Are you there? Do you want off the plateau?

Do you ever feel that you have more responsibilities than time in which to perform them? Actually, I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t feel that way! Thankfully, God has given us a resource to help us make decisions concerning our time. It’s called wisdom!

How many of us have ever heard of Jacob Knapp? In his day, he was one of the best known preachers in America. Often titled “Elder” Knapp because of the Baptist teaching that the senior officer of the local church is the bishop/elder/pastor (see Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Peter 5:1-4), this man has a unique place in the history of Baptist work in this country.

One of the defining moments in my life occurred at a restaurant table nearly thirty years ago. Across the table was a man who had been one of my childhood heroes. Years earlier, he had preached in our church and signed my Bible.

Telling lies has been and will be part of the human condition; after all, before we were saved we were of our father the devil, and he is the father of lies. However, I must admit it seems like lying has soared to new heights in our culture.

An old Yiddish proverb says, “God gave burdens, also shoulders.” But have you ever felt that your shoulders were too weak to bear your burdens? This is one reason God has made the church a family—that we might bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

When the twelve spies returned from their foray into the Promised Land, all of them gave testimony to seeing the same things. They all saw a fertile land that flowed with milk and honey and they saw the fruit that the land produced such as the grapes of Eshcol.

Our natural tendency is to create our own definitions of purity—building longer and more impressive lists of rules every year. But if we want to please God, we must get our definition of pure religion from the Bible.

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament deals with David and his band of men living in a place called Ziklag. Ziklag was a village or town that was under Philistine control. David had become weary of running from Saul and thought that it might be better to hang out in this outpost city.

I recently preached on “Give Me that Old Time Religion.” But my text wasn’t from Jeremiah 6 about the old paths. In fact, the message itself wasn’t about the “old time religion” in the sense of preserving a culture from earlier days of fundamentalism.

During suffering, realities of life change our perspective on priorities. Suddenly, the trivial and petty things that used to mean so much to us, mean almost nothing. Through these times, God refocuses our vision and realigns our priorities with His.

In my article 5 Reasons to Use the King James Version, I said that some of the features most criticized in the King James Bible are among the best reasons to keep it! For example, consider the thee’s and thou’s. The King James Version was not written in the everyday language of people on the street in 1611.

Without hesitation, I can say that God has done His greatest works in my life through seasons of adversity. Sometimes, however, in moments of introspection we wonder, Why all the suffering?

A hog and a hen sharing the same barnyard heard about a church’s program to feed the hungry. The hog and the hen discussed how they could help. The hen said, “I’ve got it! We’ll provide bacon and eggs for the church to feed the hungry.”

Perhaps it was ingrained into our minds during elementary school, but there is something about summertime that seems to change people’s thinking. Even adults seem to develop a kind of “recess mentality” that focuses on self and lets responsibility slide.

To many, holiness means stained glass windows, organ music, or candles. Those things are not holiness. They are religious trappings of people trying to create an aura of holiness.