360 results found
13 Tactical Steps to Take in Your Battle Against Sin
We should not become complacent about sin. We must fight it daily. This is not optional. This is mortal combat: Sin dies or we die. How do we kill sin? Here are thirteen tactical steps in the battle.
The Huge Difference Between Worldly Sorrow and Godly Grief
Just because someone gives lip service to saying that they’re sorry doesn’t mean that they’re truly repentant. Even if they are repentant, that doesn’t mean the relationship is fully restored.
Many professing Christians have a view of salvation that's disconnected from real life, nullifies the Bible's threats, and puts the Christ-claiming sinner beyond the reach of biblical warnings.
How God’s Word Offers Us Freedom from Shame
Shame is, effectively, a public disgrace. When we think about shame, we’re thinking about three audiences. There’s God, there are fellow believers, and there are outsiders.
The Biblical Difference Between Misplaced Shame and Well-Placed Shame
The Bible makes it very clear that there is a shame we ought to have and a shame we ought not to have.
How the Church Can Support Someone Wrestling with Doubt
One of the things that we need for every element of the Christian life is the fellowship of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
The Importance of Preaching God’s Severity According to John Owen
There are some sins or degrees in sinning that neither the holiness, nor majesty, nor wisdom of God can so bear withal, as to suffer them to pass unpunished or unremarked on in this world.
Is Repentance a Work We Perform or a Gift We Receive?
Chris Brauns argues that seeing repentance as a gift vs. a work changes how we pray for ourselves and how we pray for other people.
Consider the last book you read, the last song you sang, or the last prayer you prayed. What was the focus? Was it about God, his glory, his kingdom, and his purposes?
Jesus Is Awkwardly Exclusive, Radically Inclusive, and Stubbornly Objective
According to the Bible, our greatest danger isn’t that we’ll die in some horrific accident or from a crippling disease. It’s that we’ll face the righteous judgment of the God who made the universe.
The Most Humbling and Most Beautiful Verses in Scripture
Taking a long look at our past isn’t fun, but it helpfully humbles us. We couldn’t do anything by our own power. We deserved only God’s just judgment.
A Checklist to Help Identify Your Anger and Help for What to Do Next
Christopher Ash, Steve Midgley
The Bible has plenty to say about anger—not just our own anger but also God’s. Anger is an important emotion for many reasons.
3 Ways We Are United with Each Other When We Are United to Christ
Union with Christ is profoundly personal. When God saved you, he united you to his Son. Your old life in bondage to sin ended. Your new life in service to him began.
5 Ways Our Words Can Be Verbal Cyanide
The tongue has that scope of inflammatory power in human relationships, and James is saying that those who misuse the tongue are guilty of spiritual arson.
Daniel Shows Us How to Plead with God When You’ve Blown It Badly
Daniel 9 gives us a surprising answer to a deeply practical question: How do you approach God when you’ve blown it badly?
Making Sense of the Failures of Godly Leaders, Past and Present
We are sinners and saints at the same time. It’s part of the human condition. That’s an important thing to grapple with and understand and accept that that’s a reality.
How Do We Know If Repentance Is Genuine?
Fake repentance can look remarkably like the real thing. But even if it is difficult to distinguish godly grief from worldly sorrow, we need not despair that it is impossible.
6 Arguments Satan Uses to Tempt You and 6 Responses to Use When He Does
Puritan John Flavel identified six arguments that Satan uses to tempt us, together with six model responses. Spot the voice of temptation in your life and identify how you should respond.
10 Things You Should Know About Repentance
Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that repentance is a time of celebration. If you long for a place of joy, gladness, and rejoicing, then repentance is for you.
Jesus’s Temptation Changes How We See Our Own
As believers in Jesus Christ, we constantly face temptation. We have been transformed by God’s grace, but we are not yet free from temptation.
Because God controls all things, he can ultimately work all things for our good, even those things that others mean for evil.
6 Tactics for Your Fight Against Sin
In Romans 6:12–13, Paul applies the truth of union with Christ directly to our battle with temptation. He offers a practical strategy for fighting sin that we can break down into six tactics.
The Greatest Problem with Our Shame
For most of my life, when I heard the word “shame” in the Bible or in life around me, I instinctively interpreted it as guilt. I thought of it as a strong synonym for guilt: guilt on steroids.
If I’m Saved by Grace, Why Fight Sin?
Having been justified, we are now being sanctified. And God’s sanctifying grace makes continuing in sin—willfully and unrepentantly—illogical, inappropriate, and ultimately impossible.
How to Respond to Personal Offenses in the Church
Striving for reconciliation with others demands that I love Jesus and his church more than I love nursing my sense of offense.
The Reality Behind Our Culture’s Favorite Mantra
Surely you’ve seen the simple, uplifting mantra for our times: “You Are Enough.” But have you stopped to consider why this phrase, in these settings, is this popular?
Who Is Responsible for the Suffering in the World?
Humans fell into sin only after being tempted by Satan in the garden. Thus, both human sinfulness and the devil’s work are instrumental in causing human suffering.
What Are We Saved from—and What Are We Saved To?
It is very tempting to suggest that Jesus is here to save us from the sad, purposeless lives that we feel, or the lack of meaning in our lives. But that's not what the Bible says.
To properly understand the category of living faith, one must also acknowledge the category of dead faith. One category necessitates the other.
Temptations require the Christian to resist wicked desires, not shift blame to others, and be aware of the disastrous path to which giving in to temptation leads.
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