Why Are We Baptized in Jesus’s Name?
For Jesus’s name carries Jesus’s claim, and undergoing baptism is, for those who have reached years of discretion, a sign that the claim is being accepted.
Articles on The Christian Life
2071 results found
A Lack of Generosity Means a Lack of Contentment
If we really believe that the God who created the universe cares for us and is working in our lives, then that removes the fear that makes us hoard our money.
Podcast: Why Apologetics Is Easier Than You Think (Neil Shenvi)
Neil Shenvi talks about how every Christian can do apologetics and why we must not stop advocating for the truthfulness of Christianity—even in our post-truth age.
Your struggle with assurance is a struggle to see yourself rightly—specifically, to exchange your perspective of yourself with God’s perspective of you.
We’ll Be Truly Alive on Our Third Birthday
Some day, some way, my heart will stop, as sure as eggs are eggs, and that what the world will call my death-day will really be a birthday—the third in line.
What Does Philippians 4:13 Mean?
This verse is well-loved and often quoted, but frequently misunderstood and thus misapplied. This verse is not a promise that God will enable believers to do whatever they want whenever they want it.
Podcast: Are You Ashamed of Yourself? Jesus Isn't (Erik Raymond)
Erik Raymond talks about why nothing in our lives is a surprise to our Savior because Jesus’s heart is bent toward those who have an embarrassing history, feel far from God, or struggle with sin.
Resources Related to Abortion and the Sanctity of Life
In light of the recent ruling by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, we wanted to highlight a number of resources that will help Christians to understand the truths of the pro-life position, to articulate that message, and to truly reflect on the sanctity of life.
An Open Letter to a Young Woman Contemplating an Abortion
If by “personal” we mean something that belongs to you and no one else, your decision about whether or not to end this pregnancy by abortion is not as personal as they say.
10 Things You Should Know about Abortion
Does each and every human being have an equal right to life?
Why Seek the Truth? The Achilles’ Heel of Free Thought
Atheists and agnostics insist we pursue the truth about reality—even if the idea of a meaningless universe frightens and depresses us. We ought to face facts and accept reality as it is, not as we want it to be.
Jesus Is Not Ashamed of Those with an Embarrassing Past: The Story of Tamar
While we may blush over our sin and our stories and our embarrassing past, we have a Savior who doesn't blush. He actually enters into the mess with us.
Where Did Youth Ministry Go Wrong? Identifying a Way Forward
It's concerning that our ideals about how to do family discipleship have sometimes distracted us from our more primary responsibility to teach kids the gospel. Here are a couple of the ways we get distracted.
Blessed: Revelation’s Message to Persecuted Believers with Karen Ellis (Episode 9)
Nancy Guthrie talks with Karen Ellis about what it looks like for believers to patiently endure persecution.
Why the Message of Salvation Is Evidence of the Truth of Christianity
Isn't it obvious that most Christians adopt their beliefs on the basis of emotion or tradition or culture, rather than on the basis of reason and evidence? This is an interesting objection. How could we respond?
Jesus Is Not Ashamed of Those Who Are Hurting and Hopeless
Be amazed at the power of Christ to transform a helpless man; but also, marvel at the love of Christ that claims rebels like this as his own.
Jesus Is Not Ashamed of Those Who Still Sin: The Story of Peter
Our sin doesn’t put us on the sidelines for the rest of our lives. Christ forgives us and he puts us back in the game to serve him, just like Peter.
We’re All Writing the Stories of Our Lives, but We’re All Failed Authors
We’re all writing the stories of our lives, and we’ve all failed to write and publish the book we wanted. Some of us failed at the beginning, some of us fear failed endings, all of us have failed chapters.
How Does God Feel toward Discouraged People?
God speaks tenderly toward Jerusalem. He's kind. He's patient. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
The Family Photo of God’s Family Is a Little Surprising
Imagine if we gathered together all of the believers throughout history and lined them up for a massive family photo. Whom would we see? What kinds of people would be there?
Blessed: Revelation’s Call to Courage and a Refusal to Compromise with Russell Moore (Episode 8)
Nancy Guthrie and Russell Moore discuss themes presented in the letters to the churches found in Revelation 2–3 and how we can gain courage and hope from the book of Revelation.
Does Reflecting on Our Past Hurt Show a Lack of Trust in God?
Trying to write our future story can change our present story. But what about our past story? Can we get any help in the present from reading what’s already been written in our past chapters?
7 Tips for Becoming a Better Encourager
Because Christians are called to encourage one another, we must make sure that we are crystal clear on who we are called to encourage, how we are called to provide help, and why we are called to do so.
Podcast: Don't Despair, Jesus Can Rewrite Your Story (David Murray)
David Murray talks about why there’s more to our stories than what we can do or have done, and how, in Christ, our stories can become part of God’s story—a story full of hope, and beauty, and grace.
In an Outrage Culture, Choose Respect
We would do well to remember that behind the social media post is someone who was formed by God to bear his likeness.
Who Are the 144,000? (Revelation 7)
Who will escape the wrath of God at the final judgment? Only those who belong to God, those who are sealed by him, who are numbered by him.
How Thankfulness Increases Your Capacity for Wonder
Thankfulness greatly intensifies one of life’s most precious capacities—namely, the capacity to marvel. We are created for it.
When You Don't Even Realize How Discouraged You Are
The truth is, most of us don’t like the look of discouragement. It feels embarrassing. But when we avoid areas of our own insufficiency, we also avoid finding the help we so desperately need.
Technological Progress Must Honor God’s Design for Our Bodies
We may eventually modify our bodies in ways that are helpful and necessary. But we will never reach a point where the human body is a disposable machine.
Podcast: Positive Thinking ≠ Lasting Encouragement (Lindsey Carlson)
Lindsey Carlson talks about the discouragement we all face and where to turn for true encouragement that won’t let us down.
Dear Pastor . . . Pride Is a Subtle Enemy
How frequently does pride come with us into our studies and sit with us as we prepare our sermon? How often does it choose our subject and more often choose our words and ornaments?
10 Reasons Why It’s Good to Be a Girl
We in the church should be the loudest voice in our world to rehearse all the ways it’s good to be a girl. We know the God who made us, and we know he made us very good.
How (and How Not) to Think about Religion
I cannot speak about religion without lamenting that among so many who claim to be religious, so few understand what it means.
4 Questions about the Lord’s Supper
When we understand that the church is a family, we more clearly perceive the biblical emphasis on the Lord’s Supper as a family meal, to be celebrated by the church as Jesus’s family.
Shouldn’t God’s Power Fast Track Me to Big Things?
There is to be no Christian guru. We must reject this constantly and carefully. Leaders are to serve in humility.
Podcast: Why Is Our Culture So Obsessed with Identity? (Brian Rosner)
Brian Rosner talks about how our cultural obsession with identity impacts us as Christians and how we should think about that through the lens of the Bible.
Praying to Our Father Is a Spiritual Privilege
To pray with intimacy to God as father is not a human right; it is a spiritual privilege. It is a privilege for the people of God who have been born again by the Spirit of God.
An Open Letter to Those Nearing Retirement
We need to have a clear understanding of our priorities in retirement and have a plan to implement them that can be flexible enough to adapt to changes in our abilities and life situations over the coming years.
The Lord’s Prayer Reignites Our Desire to Want to Pray
Jesus doesn’t give us an impossibly high standard of prayer. It's lofty, and none of us will do it perfectly, but he's giving us something that we can do.
Obsessed with Our Own Biography
Telling your own story is at the heart of expressive individualism. It is possible today to document your life story in considerable detail and publish it widely on a daily basis.
Blessed: The Marriage Imagery of Revelation with Jonathan Gibson (Episode 5)
Nancy Guthrie talks with Jonathan Gibson about God's people being prepared as a bride throughout Scripture in anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb and an eternal marriage in Revelation.
10 Things to Consider before Retiring Early
Early retirement may sound attractive—but be careful. There are several things to consider before you choose to retire voluntarily, since work may be more valuable to you than you realize.
Why Do We Need to Keep Praying “Forgive Us Our Debts”?
If you want to be happy in the church (or simply not give up on the church), you need to learn forgiveness. You need to grant it, and you need to receive it.
Podcast: Does Your Heart Ache for More? (Amy DiMarcangelo)
Amy DiMarcangelo talks about how our many longings point us to Christ—the only person who understands our every need and offers us eternal joy in himself.
Why Are We So Reluctant to Die?
Is there a rest remaining for the people of God? Why then are we so reluctant to die and to depart from here so that we may possess our rest?
What Should We Do When Members Won’t Attend?
Pursuing longstanding non-attenders and disciplining those who can’t be found is a mark of a healthy church.
5 Myths about Your Personal Identity
These days, knowing who you are and being true to yourself are seen as signs of good mental health and well-being, and the keys to authentic living and true happiness.
The Lord’s Prayer Teaches Us How to Pray Every Other Prayer
The Lord's Prayer orients us, most importantly, to the vertical dimension of our prayers. That's why we start by saying, “Our Father.”
What Does It Mean to Enter God’s Rest?
We are like the Israelites: When God gave them his Sabbaths of rest in a land of rest, he had more work to do to make them believe it than he had to overcome their enemies and obtain it for them.
Is “Be True to Yourself” Good Advice?
You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. People think about themselves constantly, it seems, and with high expectations!
Blessed: The Theology of the Book of Revelation with Tom Schreiner (Episode 4)
Join Nancy Guthrie as she talks with Thomas Schreiner about how our reading of the book of Revelation is impacted by our theology of the Trinity, judgment, and eschatology.
What Does It Mean to Pray “Your Kingdom Come”?
A simple definition is to think of the kingdom of God as his reign and rule. Another way to think of the kingdom is as God’s redemptive presence coming down from heaven to earth.
Does God Care about Our Happiness?
A passion for holiness isn’t the problem. It’s something every true disciple values. But sometimes we make the mistake of pitting holiness against happiness.
What Is the Sin that Leads to Death? (1 John 5)
What is the “sin that leads to death” and why does John not say we should pray for people committing such sin?
Podcast: Struggling to Pray? Start Here. (Kevin DeYoung)
Kevin DeYoung talks about our common struggle to pray and how the Lord's Prayer—the prayer that Jesus offered as a model for our prayers—can help us to pray to God day in and day out.
6 Basic Realities about a Man's Identity
What gives a man his identity? On what foundation are you building your sense of self? Your answer, whether true or false, defines your life.
All the Very Best Stories Lead Us to Hope in the Darkness
Stories, it seems, can remind our kids that in Christ, morning will always come, no matter how deep the darkness.
The One Essential Ingredient for Biblical Manhood
As men, we can fight the symptoms of a disquieted inner life—anger, lust, insecurity, anxiety, and the like. Such fights are necessary. Or, we can wage war against the bunker out of which these enemies come.
What Can I Do to Foster a Deep Hunger for Jesus?
There are so many ways that we can foster a hunger for Jesus, but the most important and primary thing is to be praying for the Holy Spirit to change our hearts.
Is Jesus Worth Following at Any Cost?
Are you ready to receive him and believe in him as your supreme treasure, even if it costs you the loss of your family and your life?
3 Ways the Gospel Changes Every Man's Life Today
Men who taste gospel freedom can’t get enough of it, and they will push through, run, chase, and endure to the end to get to that prize already promised them before time began.
10 Things You Should Know about the Book of Revelation
The challenge greater than understanding the book may be opening ourselves up to the adjustments in our lives this book calls for. Yet this greater challenge is also what promises the greatest blessing.
Blessed: How the Old Testament Helps us Make Sense of Revelation with Andrew Sach (Episode 3)
Join Nancy Guthrie as she talks with Andrew Sach about how the more we keep our eyes and ears open for Old Testament imagery and allusions, the less strange the book of Revelation will seem.
Why Being Discontent Can Actually Be a Good Thing
While my never-ending desire to explore the unfamiliar can lead to sinful discontent, there’s a holy discontent it reflects too.
Podcast: Dragons, Absent Fathers, and Stories That Heal (Kathryn Butler)
Kathryn Butler talks about the power of stories to help our kids grasp and value the true story of God’s redemption and shares about how reading with her kids helped to carry her family through the pandemic.
13 Passages to Read on Mother’s Day
Consider these passages for encouragement as a mother or to reflect on the sacrificial love of a mother in your life.
Spiritual warfare made the Puritans what they were. They accepted conflict as their calling, seeing themselves as their Lord’s soldier-pilgrims.
4 Reasons We Should Study the Book of Revelation
Many of us have a rather lightweight perception of what it means to be blessed. Revelation is going to correct some of our assumptions about what the blessed life looks like.
Blessed: Why Study the Book of Revelation? (Episode 1)
Nancy Guthrie discusses the book of Revelation and how we actually can understand its central message, encouraging us to accept the blessing promised to those who “hear and keep” this book.
Blessed: The Apocalyptic Nature of Revelation with Iain Duguid (Episode 2)
Nancy Guthrie as she talks with Iain Duguid about how we can understand Revelation in new ways when we read it as a letter, as a promise, and as apocalyptic prophecy.
The Church’s Role in Making Abortion Unthinkable and Unnecessary
Our God laid himself down for us. He gave his life for us. So whenever we take life for our own purposes, it is deadly, both to bodies and to souls.
4 Reasons We Avoid the Book of Revelation
Revelation is actually less about when Jesus will return and more about what we are to do, who we are to be, and what we can expect to endure as we wait for Jesus to return to establish his kingdom.
The Relationship between Saving Faith and God-Pleasing Works
Paul underlines repeatedly the crucial and powerful relationship between faith and the good works of love.
Podcast: Why You Shouldn't Be Afraid of the Book of Revelation (Nancy Guthrie)
Nancy Guthrie discusses why the book of Revelation is actually more accessible, more timely, and more encouraging than you probably know.
A Word of Encouragement for Those Who Don't Journal
Those of us who have not journaled before might wonder where to even begin. We might ask why journaling is important or how it helps us in our walk with the Lord.
How Do We Read the Bible Differently as Followers of Jesus?
The Christian attitude toward the Bible is part of Christian discipleship. To follow Jesus is to follow him in this too.
Podcast: Can Affectionless Faith Be Genuine? (John Piper)
John Piper discusses how he came to saving faith in Jesus and how his view of that faith has changed over the years.
Should Christians Always Submit to the Government? (Romans 13)
Paul’s counsel in Romans 13 assumes a government acting within its God-appointed parameters. When it does not, other measures may be in order.
The Theology We Claim versus the Theology We Live
Our hope is the glorification without which we cannot see the Christ who saved us. But believing in the Christian hope is one thing. Living as though that hope is real is another.
10 Things You Should Know about the Sexual Revolution
The sexual revolution is simply one manifestation of a broader culture of what we might call expressive individualism.
For the Christian, the Best Is Yet to Be
“The best is yet to be,” indeed, as the Christian poet Robert Browning wrote. God has a project. He is restoring his defaced images to the likeness of Christ.
Help! I’ve Stopped Caring about the Things of God
I imagine all Christians sometimes feel like we don’t love God enough, don’t read our Bibles enough, don’t pray enough, don’t evangelize enough, and so forth. And there’s a sense in which we are largely correct.
Podcast: Why Are We Apathetic about What Really Matters? (Uche Anizor)
Uche Anizor discusses seven deadly causes of spiritual apathy that we should all be on the lookout for and how to take steps back toward God when we realize we’re not doing well.
Is Doubt the Backstory Behind Your Apathy?
While I am consoled somewhat by the fact that doubts are normal and potentially formative, they still feel like what Lewis calls an emotional “blitz” on my belief.
The Holy Spirit, Our Helper and Beautifier
Without the Holy Spirit, the church would never have been founded. Godly leaders would never have been called, believers added, gifts distributed, service rendered, or growth realized.
Passionate about the Trivial and Apathetic about the Vital
The paradox of apathy is that, for the spiritually apathetic, there is an inverse relationship between the greatness of a truth and our emotional and practical response to it.
Podcast: How to Lament after Two Years of Loss (Mark Vroegop)
Mark Vroegop considers what it looks like to lament the COVID-19 pandemic—and how that lament can help us heal, both individually and as churches.
Is Evangelicalism Today Truly Evangelical?
If evangelicalism is to have a future worthy of the name, we who would be people of the gospel must cultivate an integrity to the gospel, and on more than paper.
An Open Letter to the Christian Disheartened by Ongoing Temptation
D. A. Carson, John D. Woodbridge
That you are experiencing rounds of temptation is not as unusual as you might suppose. From the inception of the church believers have found this pilgrim way to be strewn with multiple temptations.
Preview: ‘Gospel People’ by Michael Reeves
We are pleased to offer a special preview of Michael Reeves’s new book, ‘Gospel People: A Call for Evangelical Integrity.’
Does Evangelicalism Have a History?
If evangelicalism really is “mere Christianity,” how could it be anything but the oldest orthodoxy of the apostles?
Hope in the Midst of Languishing
Spiritual growth in seasons of languishing is more about persevering through the struggle for belief than it is about arriving at a settled conclusion.
The Notion of Authority in God's Created Order
Authority is integral to God’s created order, and when his work of creation was completed, the structure of authority he’d established in the world was good and beautiful.
How to Help Those Who Believe the Prosperity Gospel
How do we help our family members, friends, coworkers, or even fellow church members who are swept up in the prosperity gospel? Here are a few simple ideas.
If the Bible Is Enough, Why Is It Good to Retell Bible Stories?
God, throughout history, has always given not only his word to people but also has given qualified men who might teach others.
Podcast: If You Don't Catechize Your Kids, the World Will (Kevin DeYoung)
Kevin DeYoung talks about how Christians (parents and non-parents alike) can help children to trust Jesus, embrace the Bible, and love others—even those with whom we disagree.
Social Media Is Discipling You
We are shaped by the winds that blow around us. In the age of the omnipresent smartphone, the wind that shapes us most is online.
Get Your Feet Out of Death’s Path and Live
May this generation turn from the greatest of wickednesses, the placing of any created thing in the place of the Creator, getting its feet out of the paths of death so that it may live.
An Open Letter to Women Straining under the Burden of Expectations
Are you worn down by the weight of the countless roles and expectations in your life? Are you feeling the pressure of doing more and striving harder to please the people around you?
Preview: ‘Strange New World’ by Carl Trueman
We are pleased to offer a special preview of Carl Trueman's new book, ‘Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution.’
Despairing Over the Culture? There's Still a Reason to Get Out of Bed Tomorrow
Is the world so intent on dismantling what it means to be a human being that society is doomed to collapse, or at least committed to shunting Christians and Christianity to its far margins?
You Were Made to Love Your Neighbor
Just because the Bible says that not all men are our brothers, it does not follow that we are not to love all men as our neighbors.
Podcast: We're in a Strange New World. Now What? (Carl Trueman)
Carl Trueman explores the history of Western thought with the view of answering two simple questions: How did we get here? How should the church respond?
There is not an uninfluenced day, hour, or minute in our lives. We are constantly discipled by the cultural, relational, and spiritual forces around us. Which discipling forces influence you the most?
The true Christian is called to be a soldier, and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death.
Is There a Distinctively Christian Approach to History?
How should we think and write about history? How should we read critically the historical accounts of the past? How should each of us think about personal history and the history of relatives and friends?
Help! I Love Jesus but Not the Church
Have you given up on the church? Shift your gaze from your hurt and disappointment and behold the church through the eyes of Christ.
Should the Sick Be Anointed with Oil? (James 5)
James instructs the church elders to “anoint” the sick person with oil “in the name of the Lord.” Throughout the centuries, Christians have struggled to understand and apply this verse.
What Does 1 Corinthians 16:13 Mean?
“Act like men” is a phrase that could be easily misunderstood in light of modern sensibilities. For many, at first blush, it could read as a sexist statement by Paul. So, what does it mean?
A Simple Solution to a Boring Prayer Life
But if God invites and expects all his children—regardless of their age, IQ, education, or resources—to do the same thing—to pray—then prayer has to be simple.
Podcast: Do You See the Church as Lovely? (Dustin Benge)
Dustin Benge explains why the church—despite all her faults—is worth fighting for.
Suffer the Loss of What Has You in Its Grip
Lent calls us to remember once again that sin reduces us all to idolaters somehow, someway.
The New Testament Epistles offer several characteristics of false teachers and those susceptible to their teachings.
Disguising Ungodliness as Righteous Anger
Christopher Ash, Steve Midgley
Sometimes our imitation of God slides, ever so subtly, into replacement of God. We do that thing that we do. We take his place, and soon it is our honor that we are concerned about.
Can We Really Claim to Be Well?
Wellness is much more than physical health and freedom from distressing symptoms. Wellness involves the whole of our being, which includes six distinct areas.
Dear Pastor . . . You Need to Recognize Your Limits
Our limits and weaknesses are not in the way of what God can do through us, but our denial of limits and our delusions of independent strength are.
Podcast: Are We in a Loneliness Epidemic? (Lydia Brownback)
Lydia Brownback talks about her experience of the pandemic and how Christians can rally together and support one another in the wake of two years of social isolation, masks, and lockdowns.
What Did Jesus Teach about Prayer?
As mediator, Jesus brings us to God, but he does so by pouring out his Spirit upon us so that our own prayer life is to replicate his prayer life in terms of how the Holy Spirit binds us to our Father in heaven.
What Does Radically Ordinary Hospitality Look Like?
Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom.
Give Yourself to Prayer This Lenten Season
Lent could be one of those seasons where you take time to meditate, examine, and consider. Here are four categories that can organize this season of worship for you.
10 Passages to Read in the Face of Global Conflict
God is our refuge and strength. Read these passages for comfort and to help guide prayer during times of worldwide strife, conflict, and war.
What Is the Difference between Union and Communion with Christ?
An important distinction that a lot of Christians misunderstand is between the eternal union we have with God and the experiential communion that we have on a daily basis.
To Cry Is Human, but to Lament Is Christian
Every human being has the same opening story. Life begins with tears. It’s simply a part of what it means to be human—to cry is human. But lament is different.
We Are Both Job and Job’s Friends
One important question in reading any biblical text is who you, as a reader, identify with. This is easier for some texts than for others. Who do we identify with in the book of Job?
Podcast: Overcoming Me-Centered Discipleship (Jonathan Dodson)
Jonathan Dodson talks about what a gospel-centered approach to discipleship entails, highlighting the importance of transparency for everyone involved.
What Does a Committed Church Member Look Like?
There are many marks of true discipleship, but one mark is singled out as signifying to the watching world that we belong to Christ.
Watch for Faithfulness in Those around You
As you spend time in the local church, observe how the believers around you follow Jesus. Watch for people who radiate the life of Jesus and spend time with them.
The Holy Spirit Is at Work in Our Ordinariness
Our lives are building slowly toward a great climax of redemption when we will finally see God face to face. And there are smaller victories along the way.
The Necessity and Danger of Mercy Ministry
Deeds of mercy can show the power of the gospel to change us. When we help our neighbor, we give evidence that our message is true.
Preview: ‘Demystifying Decision-Making’ by Aimee Joseph
We are pleased to offer a special preview of Aimee Joseph's new book, 'Demystifying Decision-Making: A Practical Guide.’
It Takes Time to Become an Effective Missionary
God works in mysterious ways, and we should never set limits on him. All the same, depending on God to work in unlikely ways just because he can do so is unwise.
Is Joy in Christ Possible When All I See Is My Sin?
We think that somehow we have exceeded God’s capacity to forgive. We deceive ourselves to think that our sin is greater than his grace.
A Call for Theological Humility
There are plenty of issues over which Christians will be tempted to divide. We must even be willing to make sacrificial adjustments for the sake of our unity with others in the body of Christ.
What glory right here, right now, has captured your heart, and how is it shaping the way you respond to the situations, locations, and relationships in your life?
The notion of proof is multifaceted. It is often assumed that it is illegitimate to assert anything not susceptible to a strict proof.
How Can I Be Ready to Defend the Hope I Have?
If one is to be adequately prepared to give an answer for one’s Christian faith, the lordship of Christ must be a solid and unwavering commitment of one’s heart.
Podcast: The Life and Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Stephen Nichols)
Stephen Nichols discusses the remarkable life, tragic death, and enduring legacy of the German theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The Hope of Renewal for the Sexually Broken
Is darkened sexuality even the prime battleground today? Where is today’s choice point? The current struggle is the place where the Vinedresser is pruning.
Aim to be mistaken for an elder before you are appointed an elder. All pastors are elders, and every elder is a pastor.
Entering into the Loneliness of Job
There is a deep sense in which the lonely sufferings of Jesus Christ mean that no believer today is called to enter Job’s loneliness in its full depth.
Innovation Exists by God’s Design
Innovators—both virtuous ones and nefarious ones—are created by God. Scripture protects us from the myth that God is trying his best to stifle and subdue the unwieldiness of human technology.
J. Alasdair Groves, Winston T. Smith
The issue isn’t really whether or not God has emotions but what they are like. Does God experience emotions the way we do?
If My Sins Are Fully Forgiven, Why Must I Confess My Sins Daily?
There are a lot of Christians today who, amazingly, deny the importance of confessing our sins. It has to do with this distinction between eternal union and experiential communion.
Why You Need a Sabbath from Your Tech
The human body is remarkable in similarities to an efficient machine, but we are physical beings with finite limitations and eternal souls.
The Fear of God Is the Antidote to Our Anxiety
Fear is probably the strongest human emotion. But it baffles us. When we come to the Bible, the picture seems equally confusing: is fear a good thing or bad?
The Only Way We Can Overcome the Debilitating Power of Shame
Shame is undoubtedly one of the most crippling and destructive experiences in the human soul. To a certain extent, we’re all hardwired for self-punishment.
How We Work Reveals Who We Are
What we need is a work ethic that is informed by God’s word and religiously lived out in the workplace and the church.
Podcast: Why Is Making Decisions So Hard? (Aimee Joseph)
Aimee Joseph discusses why we struggle to make decisions, where God's will fits in to the topic, and how we can work on our efforts to make God-honoring choices in everyday life.
3 Things God Will Never Do with Your Sin
When we interact one with another, all too often we let our response be guided or dictated by past infractions. But this is precisely what God will never do.
10 Key Bible Verses on Brotherly Love
The faithful, covenant-keeping God asks the objects of his love to love him and other human beings too.
Is Making Decisions All about Knowing God's Will?
Before we can make decisions, it is helpful to have a robust biblical understanding of the nature of God’s will.
Sin is deceptive, both in its capacity to tempt us to follow its lead and in the way it confuses and clouds our thinking.
An Open Letter to the College Student Facing Weighty Decisions
The further into college you step, the more you realize that what you thought was the destination is really only an incredible depot for decisions.
How Can An All-Knowing God Not Remember My Sin?
Can an all-knowing, omniscient God ever truly forget? Is it not an essential element in being God that nothing ever slips his mind? Could God ever not remember?
The Crushing Freedom of Decision-Making
One of the unanticipated weights of living in an age of unprecedented freedom is the anxiety that comes as its counterpart.
Podcast: Hear What God Has Truly Done with Your Sin (Sam Storms)
Sam Storms talks about how God deals with our sin, once and for all.
For Warfield, Every Christian Is a Theologian
If life grows out of understanding, then it follows that a firm grasp and robust appreciation of Christian truth is of primary importance to Christian living.
Help! My Daily Worship Feels Stale
When we experience a time when our quiet time becomes stale, it’s easy to become discouraged, especially if we don’t know where to look for help. However, help is at hand in two ways.
Paul Was a Missionary Consumed by God’s Approval
If receiving God’s affirmation is of critical concern for our mission, then isn’t the antithetical desire for others’ approval to be a potential snare for Christian ministers?
Did Jesus Forbid Us from Taking Oaths? (Matthew 5)
Disciples must keep their word, especially when others depend on them, even if circumstances change or oath keeping brings real loss.
Podcast: How to Endure Inexplicable Suffering (Eric Ortlund)
Eric Ortlund looks at the example of Job and how, as Christians, we should respond when we face the kind of suffering that Job did.
Jesus’s Love for the Marginalized of this World
We are inclined to give our attention to and serve those with influence and power, to praise those who wield influence in the world, but every person is made in God’s image and every person is significant.
What Does It Mean to Be Fearfully and Wonderfully Made?
There is something so intricate and meaningful about how God has made us that we really should be in awe of that fact.
One Great Encouragement to Spend Personal Time With the Lord
The Lord Jesus is the one who encourages us not just to say the Lord's Prayer together at church, but also to go to our room, to shut the door, and to pray to our Father in heaven.
Resources to Help You Dig into the Bible in 2022
Consider the following resources to help you as you commit to pursuing biblical truth this year.
Discipline Your Body—for Christ
The Bible is littered with cautionary tales of those who seemed spiritually vibrant but in the end showed themselves to be disqualified. The key to it all is the body. It needs to be disciplined.
Do You Idolize a Picture-Perfect Home?
Christian, everything God has for you is grace upon grace because of what Jesus has done for you.
Modeling Our Faith to Our Kids as Both a Sinner and a Saint
Two key components are essential for family discipleship through Christian modeling. A godly role model needs to be reliable and relatable.
If Christ came to die so that when you do sin, there is a propitiation, a removal of God’s wrath, then what does this imply for living your life? Three things.
Why Do We Need a Liturgy for Our Daily Worship?
It's not whether or not you're going to have a liturgy for your daily quiet time, it's just which kind of liturgy you're going to have.
You and I and all those who belong to him and are his children are indeed called to his glory, and we shall become partakers of his divine nature.
The Unresolved “Why” of Suffering
When tragedy strikes, almost everyone who believes in God, along with almost everyone who claims they don’t, asks the same question: Why does God allow suffering?
John Piper shares a helpful guide for how to pray over the Word in the fight for joy.
5 Ways to Commune with Christ on a Busy Day
The crazy days will come. But with a little intentionality, and with a modest plan in place, you can learn to navigate these days, and even walk with greater dependence on God.
Discovering Depth and Renewal through Daily Liturgy
If we are dissatisfied with our times of devotion with the Lord, enriching our daily liturgy can lead to renewal and rejuvenation.
Hopelessness Leads Us to the True Hope of Christmas
God created our lives to be propelled and directed by hope, and he meant our capacity for hope to drive us to him.
What Does 1 Corinthians 10:13 Mean?
This verse promises that God will never allow a temptation that we cannot stand under because he will provide the power to escape through endurance. But what is Paul getting at here in particular?
Preview: A Special Excerpt from ‘R. C. Sproul’ by Stephen Nichols
A special one-hour excerpt from ‘R. C. Sproul: A Life’ by Stephen J. Nichols, focusing on the final days of Sproul’s life and the lasting legacy of his ministry.
Does the Bible Direct Us to Have Quiet Times?
It may come as a surprise, but there is no explicit command in Scripture to have a time of worship each day, either as an individual or as a family.
A Guide for Your Personal Worship Today
One day of structured content from the 31-day liturgical guide Be Thou My Vision to help you in your daily worship.
Preview: ‘Be Thou My Vision’ by Jonathan Gibson
Today's episode is a special audio preview of Jonathan Gibson's new book, Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship.
Podcast: How Ancient Liturgy Can Renew Your Walk with Jesus Today (Jonathan Gibson)
Jonathan Gibson talks about why liturgy can be such a powerful force for good in the life of the Christian when rightly understood and practiced.
3 Questions about Regeneration
Joel R. Beeke, Paul M. Smalley
New birth is an absolute necessity for salvation. Without regeneration, the glorious offer of the gospel will not save a single soul.
God loves joy-motivated giving to others because it expresses contentment in God’s gracious giving to the believer.
7 Tips to Help Introverts Connect at Church
In our individualistic, consumer-minded culture, it can seem acceptable to conclude that, if you’re an introvert, church just isn’t your thing. But the Scriptures tell a different story.
What Does the Bible Say about Evangelism?
There is a gift of evangelism, and we should be grateful for those to have it, but all believers are called to be faithful in sharing their faith.
The Food of Christian Survival
When you understand Bible reading as the means, the food, the fuel, the sustenance of your Christian life, then you will consume it with joy, like a hungry person eats bread.
Generosity is the calling card of all who are recipients of the generous good news of salvation through Christ.
Gospel wakefulness persists and endures, settling deep into the heart and the conscience of a believer that it carries through all emotional highs and lows.
Why We Desperately Need the Message of Revelation
In the midst of evil, in a world in which the Christian faith is under attack, we need hope and assurance that evil will not have the last word.
Watch Paul Tripp Teach on 12 Doctrines That Will Transform Your Life
Paul David Tripp takes a close look at twelve core doctrines and how they engage and transform the human heart and mind.
Though God receives our offerings, he isn’t looking for our outward offerings that give back to him what he gave us in the first place.
10 Key Bible Verses on Thankfulness
Reflect on the goodness of God and his gifts to his children, and give thanks for who he is!
When God’s Provision Isn’t What We Expected
After Jesus’s first show of miraculous power in the Gospel of Mark (his healing of a man with an unclean spirit), the amazed people turn to each other and say, “What is this?”
Podcast: How to Find a New Church (Edward W. Klink III)
Mickey Klink talks about what you should look for in a new church, what factors should impact your decision, and what warning signs to be on the lookout for in your search.
8 Ways the Doctrine of Eternity Clarifies Our Values
If you want to know what you truly value, consider where you tend to invest your time, energy, gifts, and money.
As much as a church does facilitate and organize relationships and practices, the church is more than a means to an end, a utilitarian resource for an individual Christian’s needs.
Doctrine: Information Leading to Heart Transformation
When you enter the world of biblical truth, you’re entering a moral battleground. The great drama of life is not about information.
Introducing ‘Do You Believe?’ by Paul David Tripp
Paul David Tripp takes a close look at 12 core doctrines and how they engage and transform the human heart and mind.
Obey Even When You Don’t Understand Why
Whenever we take a rule from our Father and begin examining it apart from him—apart from his character, his fatherly affection, his authoritative goodness—we fall into sin.
What Is Doctrine and Why Does It Matter?
Faith is not just something you do with your brain. Faith is a commitment of your heart that changes the way you live every day.
Podcast: What You Believe about God's Sovereignty Matters for Real Life (Paul Tripp)
Paul Tripp discusses what the Bible actually teaches about the extent of God’s sovereignty, the purpose of evil and suffering, and the idea of free will.
Why the Church Can Rest in Christ’s Victory
We’re a part of what the Lord is doing in the world when we’re pastoring a church or even a member of a church. We know that he will accomplish his good end.
4 Roles Scripture Plays in the Life of a Believer
The doctrines of the word of God were not intended just to lay claim on your brain, but also to capture your heart and transform the way you live.
Should I Choose a Church for Its Pastor?
The centrality of the Word coming from the front, from the preacher, the one specially gifted by God and called to that ministry, is the most important thing you can look for in a church.
The Lord has a storehouse of blessing and honor for his people—the question is, are we humble enough to enter as unworthy characters in his story, humble enough to beg for crumbs?
What Our Physical Diet Says about Our Spiritual Appetite
He has prepared food for us. The food he has prepared is himself. He serves us himself through his holy word—the Bible.
Podcast: Sourdough Starters, Daily Bread, and the Goodness of Jesus (Abigail Dodds)
A discussion with Abigail Dodds about what the mixture of flour, water, and yeast can teach us about God, the Bible, and what it really means to be satisfied by our Savior.
The Wilderness Offers Us New Sight
When we walk through any season of wilderness, the greatest danger is not the scorching heat of the trial; it is that we would be blind to the God who sees us.
What Does the Bible Say about Marriage?
Marriage is an ordinance given to human beings in creation. It is therefore not negotiable, but is entrusted to us both as a “given” and as a gracious gift.
5 Questions about the Local Church
Ultimately, the local church makes visible what is invisible, and reflects in words and deeds the kingdom life that is to come.
An Open Letter to the Churchless Christian
It is impossible to have a faithful walk with Christ and Christian life—biblically or practically—without committed participation in a local church.
How Does Jesus Respond When We Doubt? (John 20)
Do we think our doubts trouble Jesus? Do we think skepticism is a surprise to him? Our honest thinking will not offend him. He can handle any question we have.
The Liberation of Being Bought By Christ
With the gospel, if we belong to Jesus physically and bodily, then actually the only person our bodies need to please is Jesus.
Draw Near to the Lord in Your Fight for Purity
By persevering in prayer, your gaze will be fixed on Christ, which God will use to transform you.
Is the Reformation Yesterday’s News?
The Reformation still matters because the debates between Catholics and Protestants have not gone away.
We are encouraged not to fear, but trust in the Lord with all our hearts, leaning not on our strength and understanding, but on his.
11 Notable Quotes from Missional Motherhood
There is eternal value in even the most mundane moments if the Great Commission informs how we’re thinking about all of life, including what it means to be a mom.
The Importance of the Gathered Church
Love is messy. You know what else? The gospel is messy. It means loving sinners—people like you and me.
Church Membership Is Not a One-Way Street
What is church membership? It’s the commitment Christians make to keep one another accountable for regularly gathering and centering their lives together on the gospel.
How to Pray for International Missions
When we pray for the work of missions, we are joining an essential work as co-laborers with the missionary. But what should we pray?
Crossway+ Special: Up to 50% Off Advent Resources
Starting today and running through October 27, 2021, Crossway+ members receive 40%–50% off these advent resources—great for preparing your heart for Christmas.
4 Ways to Prepare for Ministry
Perhaps you’re looking for boxes to check, some way to easily measure your progress toward the pastorate. Now you’re left feeling a bit frustrated. So what now?
Nehemiah's Deeper Concern for Building Up God's People
The work of God gets done when there is a good heart for God and his work. It starts in a heart with a deep concern for the glory of God and the health of his church.
Did Jesus Really Mean That We Should Hate Our Families? (Luke 14)
He is to have absolute rule and sovereignty over one’s life; no family relationship can take precedence over one’s commitment to Jesus.
You Have Everything You Need for Life and Godliness
Knowing that God has promised to complete the work he began in us, we are well equipped to practice perseverance.
Podcast: Mind Your Own Conscience and Love Your Neighbor (Andy Naselli and J. D. Crowley)
Should always obey our conscience? What should we do when our conscience disagrees with another Christian’s, and how the conscience relates to objective right and wrong?
Dear Pastor . . . You Need the Monday Gospel
Monday is the preacher’s dog day. Ask any of us. In the cold light of day we see just how far short we fell from what we wanted and hoped for.
Dear Pastor . . . Your Shepherd Doesn’t Care How Big Your Church Is
What the Lord requires of us is faithfulness. And while it’s perfectly normal for every pastor to want his church to grow, it’s also idolatrous to marry our validation and our justification to our attendance.
God saves people for a purpose. Salvation in Christ begins a life spent growing into being like him and serving him faithfully.
How Studying the Bible Restores the Soul
How does the Bible restore our lives daily? I find no better explanation of what I have learned than the words of Psalm 19.
The Most Accessible Person in the Universe
Jesus is lowly, he's accessible. You don't have to go through security to get to him. You just have to humble yourself.
Without revelation, we cannot know God. God’s revelation is trustworthy, for God is trustworthy.
Should We Look for God in Every Story?
Glenda Faye Mathes, Leland Ryken
Finding God is our primary task and our greatest treasure. Can he be found in every story? How can literature feed us spiritually?
Podcast: How to Have Hard Conversations with Those You Love (Caroline Newheiser and Cheryl Marshall)
Cheryl Marshall and Caroline Newheiser discuss how to have hard conversations with others that put the focus on what God has said, not their own opinions.
How Elders Shepherd by Example
A church should be able to direct a newborn believer to an elder and say: “Do you want to know what a real Christian should be like? Then look at him.”
Full Audiobook: ‘The Expulsive Power of a New Affection’ by Thomas Chalmers
As a result of the fall, human feelings of love are often misplaced on the creation rather than the Creator. This classic work of the faith reorients our affections toward him.
We need to look to Christ. We need to draw our strength from him. The way we grow is simply by looking to Christ.
Help! I Don’t Know How to Initiate Meaningful Conversations
Cheryl Marshall, Caroline Newheiser
Whether speaking with strangers, acquaintances, or those we dearly love, we sometimes realize that we and they would greatly benefit if we would talk about God. But how?
3 Pieces of Advice for Every Godly Man Fighting Porn
Prayer feels weak. We feel awkward trying. So we neglect prayer. But our prayers to God are not weak. They are powerful, because God is powerful.
How Christ Has Changed Our Destiny
What does it mean to be united to Christ? It’s a little bit mysterious and elusive.
7 Tips for Confronting a Friend in Sin
Cheryl Marshall, Caroline Newheiser
Scripture speaks directly to the Christian’s responsibility to address or confront sin in the lives of other Christians.
Words That Mark a Gracious Woman
Cheryl Marshall, Caroline Newheiser
The words of a gracious friend are self-controlled, wise, and hopeful, and those who hear her speak are the better for it.
Help! I Don’t Know If My Words Are Helping or Hurting
Cheryl Marshall, Caroline Newheiser
As you have conversations with those who are suffering, remember how the Lord’s healing words have strengthened and sustained you in your own times of trouble.
Podcast: Becoming Better or Going Deeper? How Real Change Happens (Dane Ortlund)
Dane Ortlund discusses why we, as children of God, can remain hopeful—even when our journey toward Christlikeness is painfully slow.
The Eternal Importance of Our Earthly Bodies
Jesus's resurrection body is the foretaste of what is going to happen to all of us. We will all be raised to new physical life.
Understanding the Role of Justification
Theologically understood, justification is the moment—the event—that God declares a sinner righteous in his sight.
Men: Seek Transparency Rather than Accountability
Accountability opens the door for men to be pressured, cornered, and coerced into admitting what they really don't want to admit.
You Need Christ to Put Your Sin to Death
Christian salvation is fundamentally a matter of grace, rescue, help, deliverance—it is God invading our miserable little lives and triumphing gloriously and persistently over all the sin and self he finds.
Was Christ’s Coming the End of the Law? (Romans 10)
Christ is the termination of the law in the sense that he ushers in a new age— both continuous with and different from the former age.
Why You Must Leverage Your Self-Despair
There is a strange though consistent message throughout the Bible. We are told time and again that the way forward will feel like we’re going backward.
Here are seven important principles for sharing our faith with others gleaned from a close reading of Acts 8.
Preview: ‘The Death of Porn’ by Ray Ortlund
Today, we are pleased to share a special hour-long audio preview of The Death of Porn by Ray Ortlund.
Do This Breathing Exercise for Healthy Christian Living
Think of Scripture and prayer as inhaling and exhaling because that shows the two necessarily go together.
Dare to Believe in Your Own Dignity
You may see yourself as damaged goods, but that's not all you are. You are made in the image of your Creator.
Jesus’s Love in the Midst of Sexual Sin
The unfailing love of Jesus is unspeakably glorious, sacred, and precious—especially right after sexual sin.
Podcast: The Fight against Porn Is a Fight for Justice (Ray Ortlund)
We are royalty created in God’s image for a great and noble purpose. This has the power to free us from the dehumanizing lies of the porn industry.
Take a Bold Stance against the Commonality of Porn
What if not just one man but a whole generation of men takes a bold stand against the new slave trade of our time—pornography?
Don’t Define Gender Apart from the Bible
What it means to be men and women is a really complex issue and one that's very controversial today, so we need to be really careful not to go beyond what God has said.
Seeing God’s Gracious Hand in the Hurts Others Do to Us
We need to know what Scripture says in general about God’s relationship to evil. Scripture declares that the Judge of all the earth will always do what is right.
The antidote to hypocrisy is humility. What good deeds do you do that are seen by few or none? When did you last volunteer for a menial task?
Help! I Don’t Know How to Rest Well
Be honest with yourself. Are you perhaps traveling too fast and trying to do too much—thereby violating the concept of Sabbath on a weekly and daily basis?
3 Ways to Surrender Your Will to Christ
God seems extremely concerned that we learn to submit ourselves to authority, especially to the one whose lordship demands obedience from the heart.
3 Questions about Christ’s Sinlessness
Temptation cannot be defined in terms of the capacity of the one tempted to succumb. Temptation is enticement to sin from whatever source.
Your Physical Presence Is an Irreplaceable Gift
We need to realize that being embodied means that we are designed to relate to one another physically.
Steward Your Body for the Glory of God
The fact that God has made us physical means that attending to our physical life is not unspiritual; our bodies are not unspiritual.
11 Notable Quotes from A Place to Belong
Though our congregations are made up of ordinary people engaged in predictable practices, we are an outpost of heaven itself.
Podcast: Real Faithfulness Is the Kind No One Sees (Glenna Marshall)
Glenna Marshall talks about the life-changing practice of Scripture memory, the oft-given advice to give ourselves grace, and the importance of perseverance in the Christian life.
How to Believe against Your Feelings
Some people stop following Christ because they enjoy other things more than Jesus. To them, Christianity just isn’t satisfying anymore. So how should you deal with this important issue?
7 Notable Quotes from Surviving Religion 101
The college years can challenge your faith and belief in the Bible, so it’s important to equip yourself to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence.
Podcast: What Keeps You from Going to Church? (Jonathan Leeman)
Jonathan Leeman discusses the vital importance of in-person church fellowship, how we can and should prioritize involvement with the people of God in a local church—especially after a year like 2020.
The Church Has One Testimony—and It’s Anything but Boring
In various times and places and life circumstances, God calls his people. For all the outward variety in our testimonies, we actually have a common story.
Dangers for the Churchless Christian
If you try to grow as a Christian apart from a church, your growth will be misshapen.
Why We Need to Gather as a Church
Collin Hansen, Jonathan Leeman
The push toward the virtual church, we fear, is a push to individualize Christianity. It trains Christians to think of their faith in autonomous terms.
Why It Matters What We Do with Our Bodies
We might think it doesn’t matter what we do with our bodies, but the Bible repeatedly and powerfully shows us this is not the case.
Act Like the Human that You Are
C. Everett Koop, Francis A. Schaeffer
People are special and human life is sacred, whether or not we admit it. Every life is precious and worthwhile in itself—not only to us human beings but also to God.
You Don’t Get the Church You Want, but the One You Need
Collin Hansen, Jonathan Leeman
You have many reasons not to go to church. That’s why we see this moment in history as an opportunity to rediscover church.
What the Atonement Means for You
In our sin, we—who were created to know, love, and obey the God of all glory—stand guilty and condemned before him; we cannot save ourselves.
Male and Female He Created Them
Everything else in creation reflects something of God’s glory in a general sense, but humanity alone is described as being created in God’s image.
We forget who we are, and when we do, we begin to give way to doubt, fear, and timidity. Identity amnesia makes you feel poor when in fact you are rich.
Podcast: Knowing Your Heart and When (Not) to Follow It (Craig Troxel)
What's the difference between a Christian and secular understanding of the heart, what are the heart's spiritual functions, and how we can think about them in terms of our minds, desires, and will?
8 Notable Quotes from Ten Words to Live By
Are Christians to disregard the law or embrace it with joy? Learn to see the law of God as a feast for your famished soul.
Why Good Theology Matters in Prayer
Knowing who God is and what he’s like as revealed in Scripture is very important as we approach God in prayer.
A Brief Intro to the Origins of Humanity
One of the hot spots in the perceived conflict between science and Christianity is around the question of how human beings came to exist.
5 Questions about Church Membership
The local church is the authority on earth that Jesus has instituted to officially affirm and give shape to my Christian life and yours.
Help! I Don’t Like Praying in Public
Prayer can get repetitious, feel rote, rambly, or distracted. For these reasons, many are reticent to pray in public. How can we overcome our fears and misguided thinking?
7 Tips for Being a Good Friend
As we emerge from this pandemic, we have a fresh opportunity to embrace essential relationships, not just returning to our pre-pandemic status-quo, but moving forward into something even better.
Preview: What God Has to Say about Our Bodies by Sam Allberry
There’s a danger in focusing too much on the body. There’s also a danger in not valuing it enough.
Unrealistic standards of beauty are being pushed on us almost constantly by the media, and the cumulative effect is that it can leave us thinking about our bodies in a seriously distorted way.
5 Guidelines for Preparing Congregational Prayer
Effective public prayer must be well-prepared prayer. This is the engine that will move all the other principles.
Podcast: Why Your Physical Body Matters to God (Sam Allberry)
Sam Allberry talks about the eternal significance of our physical bodies, how it relates to our identity, and why our bodies matter here and now.
God gave his own Son as the final sacrifice so that your brokenness could be the only prerequisite to receiving God’s abundant mercy.
10 Key Bible Verses on Slothfulness
According to Scripture, laziness or sloth is considered a sinful indulgence. Learn more about what God values in kingdom laborers.
Podcast: Reading the Psalms with Jesus in View (Dane Ortlund)
Dane Ortlund discusses how the psalms uniquely invite us into prayer and devotion, how they reflect the greatness of God, and how he cares for his people.
An Open Letter to the Hesitant Church-Goer
Helpful reflections and encouragement for believers who are hesitant to return to church for a variety of reasons.
How Moms Can Model God’s Grace
One way to teach our children about our need for God’s grace in Christ is to appropriately confess our sin to them.
A 10 Question Catechism for One-on-One Pastoral Care
What follows is the catechism that pastor Richard Baxter used in his parish to train and instruct those under his care.
If the people in our charge are to teach, admonish, and exhort each other daily, no doubt we pastors may do the same for one another
A faithful response to sin involves drawing near to God in faith through confession, repentance, and trusting the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
J. I. Packer on the Hub of Christian Life
Packer would contend that one has fallen short in the knowledge of God until such time as the glory of God becomes central in all areas of life and thought.
4 Ways to Fight Sexual Temptation
We must choke temptation to death—it is the only way out. Here are four ways to fight when temptation strikes.
Advice for a New Christian Reading the Psalms
We want to read the Scripture, inhale it, and then exhale it out to God in whatever way makes sense for our own life.
Stay on Mission—Even in the Later Years
One joy of aging is a stillness of soul that helps us see the small moments as sacred moments when we can reflect God’s glory to someone else.
Podcast: What an Old Controversy Teaches Us about Grace and Legalism (Sinclair Ferguson)
Sinclair Ferguson discusses the relevance of church history and divisive theological positions as we dig into a largely forgotten 18th-century Scottish debate about God’s grace and our works.
Advice for Wisely Navigating the Internet
Wisdom is knowing where you're going and sticking to that. Foolishness is straying off the path, being susceptible to people on the periphery calling for your attention.
Good Bible Reading Requires Humility
The first step in reading the Bible in the power of another is to begin with humility. It begins with the renunciation of pride.
How Medicine Is a Means of Common Grace
Common grace prompts us especially to love one another as Christ has loved us and to pursue medicine as a ministry of mercy.
Encouragement for a Fatigued Caregiver
Caregiver fatigue is real. For someone going through this, there is still hope, joy, and merit to your service.
What Does Jeremiah 29:11 Mean?
This verse is commonly found on bumper stickers, signs, cards, etc. to encourage people to have hope for the future. But is that really what this well-known verse means?
Prayer is oxygen for the Christian. It sustains us. So it follows that prayer must be a source of life for any community of Christians.
Blessing in God’s Plan of Redemption
Blessing plays a significant role in God's plan of redemption, in that blessing is the goal of God's plan of redemption.
6 Ways to Fight the Debilitating Power of Doubt
In your suffering, doubt is a battle worth fighting. Remember, you never fight this battle alone but with the strength that is yours because of the presence and power of Christ.
Does God Give Us More than We Can Handle?
Perhaps it takes growing old to realize that aging with grace sometimes feels impossible. It is more than we can handle.
10 Key Bible Verses on Freedom
As Christians, we’ve been released from the power of sin and death by Jesus and his substitutionary death on the cross.
11 Notable Quotes from Everyday Faithfulness
What does Christian faithfulness look like when life feels unpredictable, hard, or just plain ordinary? Be encouraged by these quotes from Everday Faithfulness by Glenna Marshall.
11 Notable Quotes from None Like Him
God is wildly different from us, and this is for good reasons—one of which is to teach us humility before him.
Podcast: Help! I’m Afraid to Share My Faith (Isaac Adams)
Isaac Adams discusses the nature of evangelism and why we so often feel intimidated, unequipped, or unsure of how to even speak about the gospel to others in our lives.
The word submission is loaded with a powder keg of emotions. We live in a culture more accustomed to questioning authority than submitting to it.
4 Reasons to Let Go and Trust God
We can trust God to manage the future without our help. It is none of our business.
We each have a blink. We can waste it in sinful busyness or laziness or discontentment or distraction. Or the gospel of Jesus Christ can change how we spend our time.
Dig into Historic Creeds and Confessions on ESV.org
Learn more about these how these truths can shape and motivate the lives of all who follow Christ.
Podcast: Why Union with Christ Is More Amazing Than You Think (Marcus Johnson)
What is the doctrine of union with Christ, and why is it so misunderstood today?
4 Ways to Look for the Good in Others
All of us can see the good in our friends. Scripture, however, authorizes us to see the good and enjoy it in all people, even when most of us are not always so good.
Help! I’m Feeling Anxious about . . . Everything
Let’s be honest, we’re all worried, aren’t we? The good news is that God knew this day was coming and has provided counsel for us to stop worry at its source.
Podcast: 5 Attributes of God We Too Often Neglect (Mark Jones)
How should we understand God in his fullness—both near to us as our Father and yet above and beyond us as our Creator?
Read the Bible for the Sake of Others
Sermons, classes, and small groups aren’t the only ways the church teaches us to read Scripture. We’ll also become better Bible readers by investing in relationships with fellow members.
Should the Church Operate Like a Business?
How we think about the church will affect how we think about our service in the church.
Why Christ’s Relationship to the Law Matters
Christ fulfills the law by obeying it perfectly during his earthly ministry. This is an important detail that's sometimes left out of gospel presentations.
Communion Is a Meal of Remembrance
As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember him, just as he told us to. We look back with thankful hearts to the cross.
Mere Christianity as C. S. Lewis’s Personal Testimony
Believing in a moral God is still not the same as believing that God took on flesh and dwelt amongst us as Jesus.
Why the 10 Commandments Are Still Relevant
The law in the New Testament is to show us that in the life of the believer, the law is in fact a means of grace because it shows us what pleases God.
Podcast: The Life and Mind of C. S. Lewis (Harry Lee Poe)
Learn fascinating details about the start of Lewis’s career, his personal faith, the relationships that would shape his world, and the books that would make his name world-renowned.
Seeing God’s Grace in the Hospital Room
It can be really hard to remember God's love when you're working in the hospital witnessing other people's suffering, or even in the hospital as a patient yourself.
Rest in God’s Faithfulness, Not Yours
God not only forgives your sins and guarantees you a seat in eternity, but welcomes you to a radically new way of living.
Ministry leadership, at its core, is about a community of leaders practicing together the presence of the Lord.
Why Pastors Have a Unique Responsibility to Counsel
You must counsel. It’s not optional. You can’t say no as if it were simply a career choice, a matter of personal preference, or an absence of gifting.
What Changed after C. S. Lewis Came to Christ?
He not only knew about God with his reason but also met God with his emotions. He experienced Joy. And God changed him.
Why Are There So Many Versions of the Bible?
Go into any Christian bookstore, and you can find an entire shelf—sometimes an entire section!—of different Bible translations.
Only one Comforter is great enough: the infinite-personal God who exists—that is, the God of Judeo-Christian Scripture. Only He is the sufficient Comforter.
The Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way
If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord’s work in the flesh.
How Is God Defeating Satan?: A 5-Day Devotional
John Piper explains four ways God is defeating Satan by allowing Satan to deceive, influence, and tempt—for now.
The Lord Provides—Even in Tragedy
Any good news in the hospital is a glimmer of God’s grace. Any cure reflects not the power of our own hands, but rather his provision for us.
How to Pray for Your Child’s Salvation
We cannot force this faith. We labor for it, we teach to it, we encourage it, and above all, we can pray for it.
We Must Worship God on His Terms
True worship is not possible unless God himself enables it, because human beings are unable to truly worship him without his enabling.
How Delight and Obedience Coexist
The law of God changes when we move from thinking about it in terms of our justification to our sanctification.
How to Pray for Christian Doctors
The demands of medicine and the spiritual burdens of long hours take their toll. Here are five ways to pray.
We Should Expect Frustration When Reading the Bible
If we give in to impatience with the learning process, we tend to react in one of two ways.
4 Key Components of Mainstream Anglicanism
Jesus Christ fills the mental horizon of mainstream Anglican believers; the claim and the purpose is that in all we do, we are seeking Christ’s glory and furthering his kingdom.
Podcast: What Your Marriage Needs Most (Paul David Tripp)
Paul Tripp discusses how the gospel comes to bear on the day-to-day realities of marriage and why that's more than just a platitude.
Survival mode for the weary Christian is not hibernation from Christ but perseverance in Christ.
Tips for Students Facing Doubt in the Real World
When facing doubts and fears, the last thing you want to do is isolate yourself and struggle alone.
Why Sanctification Is Not Passive
Sanctification is absolutely essential to the life of faith—so much so that Scripture frequently treats holiness as the identifying mark of a true believer.
Luke: A 10-Day Devotional Reading Plan
See how the Gospel of Luke presents Jesus as the promised King of kings, showcasing how Jesus’s earthly ministry is good news to the downtrodden, the hurting, and the outsider.
3 Reality Checks for Your Marriage
What are the essential wisdom perspectives that Scripture gives us that enable us to have realistic expectations for our marriage?
Tithing in Financially Tight Times
Giving out of scarcity declares in an especially profound way that God is better than money.
The practice of remembering the Sabbath requires Israel (and us) to remember what God has ordained for his children from the earliest moments of human existence: a pattern of work followed by rest.
An Open Letter to the Christian Frontline Medical Worker
The work to which you’ve devoted your life can plunge you into your darkest hours, luring you into doubts about God’s love, perhaps even about his existence. Where is God in all this?
4 Reasons Christians Should Use Their Minds
Stott recognized the need for both intellect and emotion in Christianity, but, clearly for him, “the greater danger is anti-intellectualism and a surrender to emotionalism.”
This Day in History: John Stott Was Born
On this day in history John Stott, one of the most influential Christian leaders of the twentieth century, was born. This year marks the centenary of his birth.
The Longing of Every Human Heart
There is no emotion, no experience, and no quest more authentically human than love.
Podcast: Trauma, Pain, and Loss: A Doctor’s Story of Faith and Healing (Katie Butler)
Kathryn Butler discusses her work as a trauma surgeon working in the ICU, sharing what it was like to be inundated with life and death situations day in and day out.
An Open Letter to the Christian at a Secular College
Whenever we start doubting our faith, it’s usually because we’ve come to believe something else in its place.
What to Do When God Doesn’t Answer
We are called, as was Job, to begin our lives of discipleship with the fear of God and repentance from evil.
Help! My Beliefs Are Viewed as Intolerant
As our world continues to speak about inclusivity, diversity, and tolerance, it can seem like Christianity is embarrassingly behind the times.
3 Important Truths Job’s Friends Neglected
In the context of the whole Bible, perhaps the deepest error and omission of Job’s friends is this: they have no place for innocent suffering.
Help! I Can’t Find Someone to Disciple Me (Garrett Kell)
In this episode, Garrett Kell discusses why all Christians are called to be discipled and to disciple others.
Deaconing is not for the faint of heart. Much of it is thankless: grunt work, not stage work.
What is righteous vs. unrighteous anger? What does the anger of God look like? Glean insight about the right time and application for anger by reading these verses and commentary.
Deacons are not the church’s spiritual council of directors, nor the executive board to whom the pastor-CEO answers. They are a cavalry of servants.
An Open Letter to Those Suffering in the Hospital
Perhaps in the hospital bed, you try to pray but can’t find the words. The spiritual disciplines upon which you’ve depended seem oceans away.
Podcast: How Should We Define the Gospel? (Greg Gilbert)
Greg Gilbert discusses why Christians so often struggle to clearly define a simple yet foundational concept: the gospel.
Help! I Don’t Know How to Reestablish a Healthy Church after COVID
Not meeting together has meant missing out on the countless interactions that establish and enable the very practical supports which overflow from our spiritual unity in Christ.
Feminine Beauty and Masculine Strength
What do we say to our sons and daughters who ask, “Daddy and Mommy, what does it mean to be a man or a woman?” Tell them they are made in the image of God and for union with Christ.
How God Brings Us to Glory: A 5-Day Devotional Reading Plan
God doesn’t just require holiness; he promises it to his people, he bought it for them, and he brings it about in their hearts and lives.
Are Miracles Still Possible and Probable?
The most fundamental reason that people don’t believe the miracles in the Bible is because they already believe something else, namely, that miracles are impossible.
Podcast: Faith, Family, and the Creative Life (Ruth Chou Simons)
Ruth Chou Simons discusses her life as an artist, sharing her passion for creating beautiful pieces of art that reflect the beauty of our Creator.
Because your world is not out of control but under God’s careful redemptive control, you can have hope even when it looks to you as if darkness is winning the day.
Podcast: Surviving College with Your Faith Intact (Michael Kruger)
Michael Kruger discusses the top intellectual challenges to biblical Christianity many students will face on a secular campus.
Learn more about German designer and illustrator, Peter Voth, and his work on the ESV Single Column Journaling Bible, Artist Series.
Full Audiobook: The Biggest Story by Kevin DeYoung
We are pleased to share the entire audio of The Biggest Story by Kevin DeYoung on The Crossway Podcast.
The 5th Commandment Is for Adults Too
The fifth commandment is found in the middle of a list of commands clearly addressed to adults, targeting issues that are, developmentally speaking, primarily the concerns of adulthood.
God Doesn’t Love You Because You’re Special or Good
God loves his people despite their sin against him. He loves them before they love him back, and before there’s anything in them worthy of his love. But his love doesn’t stop there.
6 Questions about Finding a Mentor
We need mature believers to help us resist sin, grow in godly affection, and to persevere in faith.
We Need Both Rules and Relationship with God
To obey the law is to look like Jesus Christ. While legalism builds self-righteousness, lawfulness builds righteousness.
Delighting in God’s Law: A 10-Day Video Devotional with Jen Wilkin
Join Jen Wilkin, author of Ten Words to Live By, for a ten-day journey through the Ten Commandments, learning what they are and what they mean for our lives.
An Open Letter to Women in the Church
Sister, don’t try to follow Christ alone. There is no substitute for your commitment and service to your local church.
5 Questions about the Ten Commandments
We should love the law because we love Jesus, and because Jesus loved the law.
3 Losses of an Illiterate Culture
Glenda Faye Mathes, Leland Ryken
The decline of reading has impoverished our culture and individual lives. We have lost mental sharpness, verbal skills, and ability to think and imagine.
Preview: Ten Words to Live By by Jen Wilkin
Today, we are pleased to share a special hour-long audio preview of Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands by Jen Wilkin.
Podcast: Delighting in the Ten Commandments (Jen Wilkin)
In this episode, Jen Wilkin discusses what's wrong with the way we often talk about the Law, along with some of the common dangers of legalism.
The Wisdom of God-Centered Rhythms in a Me-Centered Age
When every moment of our iWorld existence conditions us to celebrate the self, the church boldly celebrates something bigger, grander, and more compelling.
Help! I Don’t Know How to Answer My Kid’s Tough Questions
Rather than seeing our cultural challenges today only as obstacles for our kids, I’m increasingly convinced they’re opportunities to do three important things.
Thoughtful reading is becoming a lost art. Artful reading is dying. Many people believe it’s drawing a final breath on its deathbed.
Our new status and our new identity are due to the saving mercy and transformative power of God and are not of ourselves.
Podcast: Why Your Church Needs Plural Leadership (Dave Harvey)
Dave Harvey discusses why plural leadership—a team of elders—is so crucial for the health of a local church.
You Can Change: A 5-Day Devotional Reading Plan
Over the course of five days, be encouraged by God’s commitment to his own in this devotional adaptation from John Piper’s book, Providence.
Most of us like to think we’re basically good people. We know we’re not perfect. We sometimes do bad things. But at heart, we think we’re pretty good.
6 Questions about the Fear of God
On the one hand, we are told that Christ frees us from fear; on the other, we are told we ought to fear—and fear God, no less. Is fear a good or a bad thing?
What Does It Look Like to Be Blessed?
What is the proof that God is for us? Where else do we need to look other than God giving the most valuable thing in the universe, offering up his one and only Son for his people?
Podcast: Preparing Our Kids for a Post-Christian World (Rebecca McLaughlin)
Rebecca McLaughlin discusses what it looks like for parents to prepare their teens for a life in a post-Christian world, reflectong on kids' propensity to ask hard questions and why that's a good thing,
We need to remember that the Bible is God's direct speech to us. His word is the source of wisdom. It is God himself speaking to us.
Why It Is Unloving to Preach #YouDoYou
If the ship is going down, it’s not arrogant to tell people the truth and point them to the lifeboat. It’s deeply unloving not to.
I would argue that the author of Hebrews is presenting much more than a definition of what faith is, but also offering a summary of what faith does.
God’s Calling for George Müeller
When Müller was twenty years old, he was invited to a Bible study and, by the grace of God, felt the desire to go.
As we savor the good news of the sin-bearing servant of the Lord, we learn to enthuse. The gospel of a surprising salvation can only make us laugh, sing, and cheer.
3 Ways the Internet and Social Media Benefit Wisdom
In what sense are the Internet and social media potentially valuable for wisdom? We know the many downsides to online life. What are the upsides?
9 Notable Quotes from Providence
The providence of God is his purposeful sovereignty by which he will be completely successful in the achievement of his ultimate goal for the universe.
You Live in a God-Entranced World
The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a painting, or a sculpture, or a drama.
The Role of Prayer and Missions in Salvation
Prayer and evangelism are both part of the plan—the all-embracing, all-pervasive, unstoppable providence of God is the only hope for making our efforts effective.
Corporate Salvation Leads to Corporate Worship
Being a Christian—a worshiper of God—entails identifying with God’s worshiping people. You’ve been adopted into his family.
Pursue God, Not Just His Blessings
God’s blessing is not contingent upon whether we live in material wealth or whether we live in material poverty because we can learn to be content.
Help! I’m Struggling to Connect with my Church Family During COVID
The pandemic has stripped away many of our opportunities to connect with the people in our congregations.
Q&A: Dane Ortlund Answers Your Questions about the Heart of Christ for Sinners
A couple of weeks ago, we asked readers to submit their questions for Dane Ortlund. Many of you sent in questions from around the world.
10 Things You Should Know about R. C. Sproul
R. C. Sproul loved to laugh. He enjoyed people. He truly knew the generosity of God, and that propelled him to serve people.
Christians, remember that God has graciously given us his Holy Spirit, who makes us fearless in troubled times.
Podcast: The Life and Legacy of R. C. Sproul (Stephen Nichols)
Stephen Nichols discusses the fascinating life and ministry of the late R. C. Sproul reflecting on who he was in private and how his theological passions shaped his ministry.
Preview: R.C. Sproul: A Life by Stephen Nichols
Today, we are pleased to share a special hour-long audio preview of R. C. Sproul: A Life by Stephen J. Nichols, including the book's prologue and first chapter, on The Crossway Podcast.
Help! I Don’t Like the Music at My Church
The mark of a faithful church service is not whether it caters to our tastes, but whether it orients us to devotion to God, love for the body, and zeal to see our neighbors know Christ.
We live in an angry world, and most of it is obviously destructive. But anger is not intrinsically evil, essentially evil, or necessarily evil.
How to Pray When You’re Tempted by Anger
Here are five things you might focus on in your prayers as you seek to do the heart work necessary in your own circumstances.
3 Ingredients for a God-Exalting Worship Service
God gathers us to glorify him. Praise is the natural response of redeemed creatures.
What Can We Learn about God’s Anger from Jesus?
When Jesus is angry, he is right to be angry; the cause of his anger is right, and he expresses his anger rightly.
3 Moral Principles to Consider Related to Reproductive Technology
Modern medicine can be used to overcome many diseases and disabilities today. We should view this as a good thing, and as something for which we can give thanks to God.
Podcast: Diagnosing the Heart of Anger (Christopher Ash)
Christopher Ash discusses why anger is such a powerful, dangerous emotion for the Christian, walking through some of the key Bible passages that address the topic.
We Need the Soul-Stirring of John Wesley
Is anybody listening to the voice of John Wesley anymore? Outside the self-identified Wesleyverse, the Wesley Literacy Quotient among evangelicals has declined alarmingly.
Why would anyone ever fast? What is to be gained from giving things up?
9 Notable Quotes from Seasons of Waiting
God uses seasons of waiting to teach us patience and make us more like himself.
How Books Help Us Connect in Ways the Internet Doesn’t
We sometimes characterize the digital age as a “post-literate” age, where images and video have taken over the place that written words used to occupy.
Why It Is Good to Be Poor in Spirit
Our culture is obsessed with wealth and riches. Why, then, does Jesus call the poor "blessed?"
Practical Counsel for Those Who Have Experienced Painful Divorce
Christians who have been through divorces also have a wonderful encouragement to realize that Jesus understands our sufferings and is willing to walk beside us in them.
Podcast: The Power of Habitual Gratitude (Sam Crabtree)
Sam Crabtree explains why gratitude is actually more foundational to the Christian life than you probably think and offers practical advice for cultivating gratitude in the ups and downs of our everyday lives,
10 Things You Should Know about Love
Being a good steward of my time requires that I tune in to God’s heart and see the opportunities to love others that are all around me.
The biblical picture of love can differ wildly from how the world defines it. Be set aright and encouraged by these verses and commentary.
Social Algorithms Are Today’s “Lady Folly”
Algorithms lure us into constant distraction by putting “suggestions” into our minds, waiting to pounce and consume our attention.
5 Ways the Church Makes You Wiser
Church can be an indispensable source of stability and growth; a treasure trove of communal and Spirit-infused wisdom that we’d be foolish to neglect.
Practicing Thankfulness during a Pandemic
There is a kind of thankfulness that is grateful not only for what isn’t but for what is. The Bible doesn’t exhort us merely to be thankful in everything, but for everything.
The First Step in Celebrating Divine Grace
It’s good to mourn, it’s healthy to be sad, and it’s appropriate to groan. Something is wrong with us, something is missing in our hearts and our understanding of life.
Why do we need suggestions on how to express gratitude? Shouldn’t a truly grateful heart just naturally overflow in expressing that gratefulness?
Podcast: Inherent Dangers of the Information Age (Brett McCracken)
Brett McCracken discusses what it looks like to pursue true wisdom in a noisy and confused age.
The Beauty of Shared Suffering
God delights in identifying with us in our suffering. He feels the sting in his chest when you hurt. He takes
it personally.
Podcast: Honoring God in Singleness and Dating (Marshall Segal)
Marshall Segal discusses singleness and dating as a Christian, sharing some of his own story including his struggle with contentment as a single person.
Many unmarried people have strengthened their hands with the truth that no one has left anything for the sake of the kingdom, says the Lord Jesus, who will not receive back far more.
Fearing God Is a Matter of the Heart
The fear of God is not a state of mind you can guarantee with five easy steps. It is not something that can be acquired with simple self-effort.
Are God’s Attributes Relevant Today?
Most of us take God’s attributes for granted and seldom think about them specifically. They may be hard to fathom, but they matter greatly for our relationship to him.
The Blessing of God’s Presence
The most important blessing of the church’s new existence will be its similar experience of the immediate, palpable presence of God.
Even those in their prime with perfect health have limits. We need a stronger strength to match our deep discouragements.
It is the devil’s work to promote a fear of God that makes people afraid of God such that they want to flee from God.
4 Misconceptions about Contentment
One of our greatest struggles with contentment is that we often have an incorrect picture of what it means to be content.
Why You Should Be Thankful for Your Knowledge of Sin
Of all the blessings in my life, one is without a doubt the most wonderful blessing of all. Of all the things I most needed, but could never provide for myself, this was my deepest need.
4 Questions about the Attributes of God
His almighty power makes it possible for him to reach out to us in love and to save us from our sins. This is why the attributes of God matter.
1–2 Peter: A 10-Day Devotional Reading Plan
Over the course of 10 days, dig deeper into the books of 1–2 Peter and learn how God uses hope, humility, and holiness to prepare believers for their final home in heaven.
Podcast: Should Christians Fear God? (Michael Reeves)
What is the Bible getting at when it commands us to fear the Lord? Is it ever sinful to fear?
Why Mourning Can Be Good for Us
Mourning sin—past, present, and future—is the first step in seeking and celebrating the hope of divine grace.
We Need a Theological Framework for Racial Reconciliation
It’s really critical that the Bible and theological categories inform the racial reconciliation conversation lest culture and politics become where we start from.
How Lament Moves Us toward Others
Lament doesn’t solve all the problems of racial reconciliation, but it can really help.
Podcast: Practicing Hospitality in a Pandemic (Rosaria Butterfield)
What does it look like to embrace the call on all Christians in a time where we're limited in unprecedented ways?
In God’s sweet providence, I began studying Psalm 90 about a year before my eightieth birthday, asking the Lord to teach me how to glorify him in old age.
What Does It Mean to Flourish?
As counterintuitive as it sounds, flourishing is a slow and progressive death that brings abundant life.
An Open Letter to Victims of Abuse
Justin S. Holcomb, Lindsey A. Holcomb
Disgrace is the opposite of grace. Grace is love that seeks you out even if you have nothing to give in return.
14 Notable Quotes from Habits of Grace
“Habits of grace” are the God-designed channels through which his glorious grace flows—making them life-giving practices for all Christians.
Podcast: Disciplines of a Godly Woman (Barbara Hughes)
Barbara Hughes discusses why discipline is important for Christian women, highlighting her own struggle to cultivate a disciplined life over the years.
An Open Letter to the Woman Struggling with Aging
If you’re like most women, fear about your changing physical appearance is just the beginning of aging anxiety. Many of us struggle with aging because we know it is often a season of loss.
The one prayer Christ calls us all to pray requires us to let go of our momentary agendas and take up his eternal one.
Grace Gives Us a New Way to Live
The most outrageous acts of penance in the world are powerless to do what needs to be done—radically transform your heart. So you and I are left with only one final option.
10 Key Bible Verses on Spiritual Discipline
Godly character is developed over time—honed by the practice of spiritual disciplines and commitment to living honorably before men and God.
Meditate On and Mutter God’s Word
Slowly and prayerfully turning over Scripture engages the eyes, the ears, and the mouth, and drills through the granite to the heart—maximizing internalization and devotion.
Common Barriers to Family Worship
There are barriers to creating a regular habit of family worship, but God has provided many helps to get over them.
Good deeds matter to God in regards to their purpose for the church, the world, our sanctification, and God’s glory.
Podcast: Disciplines of a Godly Man (Kent Hughes)
Kent Hughes discusses why discipline is so important for the life of a Christian man. He explains how discipline is actually aimed at freeing us to be the men that God called us to be.
What Does Deuteronomy 31:6 Mean?
What’s the most frightening thing you’ve ever had to do? Terror is a powerful force that can seize us and render us powerless to act.
9 Principles for Navigating Anxiety and Depression
What are the general principles to bear in mind as you begin to work with your teen through anxiety and depression?
Why You May Want to Take a Silent Retreat after Christmas
You may not know how badly you needed silence and solitude until you get to know them.
11 Notable Quotes from Come, Let Us Adore Him
Recapture your attention and reactivate your awe for Christ and his coming during Christmastime.
Jesus Didn’t Show Up Unannounced
The surety of past prophecies and the specificity of how Jesus fulfilled them is also your guaranteed future hope.
How to Worship in a Way That Speaks to Unbelievers
Though we don't want to cater only to the unbelievers in our congregations, we need to be aware of certain things we can do to help them encounter Jesus in a way they can understand.
For the Joy before Him, Christ Came
When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.
One day the ruler—the King of kings and Lord of lords—will return and make peace a reality.
Joy is the gift of God to those who trust in Christ—not circumstantial, but the result of a deep trust in and love for Jesus.
It is God’s intent that every person who comes into a relationship with him through Jesus Christ eventually will grow up into maturity. And maturity looks like Jesus.
Podcast: How to Become Fluent in the Gospel (Jeff Vanderstelt)
What does it mean to be fluent in the gospel, and why is it an essential part of living as a disciple of Jesus?
Help! I Don’t Know How to Help My Kids Focus on Christ this Season
To see the goodness of God most clearly—to focus on Christ during Christmas—your children will need to see you enthralled by him and captured by him.
Busyness is like sin: kill it, or it will be killing you. When busyness goes after joy, it goes after everyone’s joy.
There is a reason to value some gifts above others, but the Bible does not teach that any are more important, lasting, or Christ-centered than other gifts.
As believers, we put our ultimate hope not in this world, but in what is unseen. We trust and wait expectantly for God to usher forth the promised King and kingdom.
Help for When a Pastor’s Time and Energy Are Limited
As you think about God-ordained limits of time, what changes are needed in your leadership community?
Podcast: A Christian Scientific Perspective on Evolution
Stephen Meyer discusses the controversial topic of theistic evolution and explains what the term does and doesn't mean.
May the God of peace be with believers—now and always—as we seek to usher in his kingdom here and now.
The Role of Technology and Media in the Sexual Revolution
Technology and the media have played a significant role in the triumph of the sexual revolution—specifically in terms of the LGBTQ+ movement.
How to Maintain Everyday Faithfulness in Festive Times
God has equipped us to follow Christ faithfully no matter what season of life we’re living.
At Christmas, God thunders into our lives in his flesh and beckons us to behold in him the glory of God, full of grace and truth.
How to Pray for the Advent Season
How do you pray to prepare for Advent season?
It is the Spirit’s work to help us see our sin. This drives us to Jesus for forgiveness, and this is very good.
Podcast: Do You Know That Jesus Is Praying for You? (Joel Beeke)
Joel Beeke discusses the doctrine of Christ's ongoing intercession in heaven and why it's more important and spiritually edifying than you may realize.
3 Reasons Jesus Is Our Only Hope
The Advent story is a hope story because it chronicles the coming to earth of the One who is hope, Jesus.
10 Key Bible Verses on Contentment
A believer’s contentment is not to be affected by circumstances, but firmly rooted in the good news of Christ and what he has accomplished for sinners.
Why Contentment Stems from a Thankful Heart
If the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God.
10 Key Bible Verses on Gratitude
Gratitude to God is essential, but not only for the sake of the good things which he bestows.
What Does It Mean to Be Your True Self?
Expressive individualism, like a lot of things, captures something of the truth. Human beings do have an inner life, and that inner life is very important to who we are.
5 Idols Revealed through Hardship
Lamenting the toppling of our cultural idols can reorient Christian exiles as to what King and what kingdom we were supposed to long for.
Podcast: Can We Really Be Content? (Erik Raymond)
What does it look like to cultivate a spirit of contentment in a world that often seems dead set on helping us do just the opposite?
C. S. Lewis and the Beauty of Self-Forgetfulness
To become humble and self-forgetful is to become truly human so that we might truly know God. God wants to give us himself.
How to Spend Your Time Waiting for an Adopted Child
God has designed the universe so that anticipation is built into the order of things.
4 Ways Christians Can Navigate Cultural Confusion around Gender in the Coming Decade
The question of transgender identity looks set to be significant for Christians both in matters of public life and pastoral care for the foreseeable future.
Inspiration for At-Home Schooling
Life includes not only living experiences, but also the best that mankind has produced in art, books, music, ideas, and many more areas.
5 Questions about Biblical Spirituality
Justin L. McLendon, Christopher W. Morgan
There is no shortage of conversations surrounding spirituality—culturally and across various religious expressions—but a Christian understanding of spirituality must have its roots in the gospel.
Look at the Jesus of the Bible. Look at him. Don’t close your eyes and hope for a word of confirmation. Keep your eyes open and fill them with the full portrait of Jesus provided in the Bible.
9 Notable Quotes from Weep with Me
In the Bible, lament is a prayer that leads to trust, which can be a starting point for the church to “weep with those who weep."
Preview: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
Enjoy a special two-hour preview of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman on The Crossway Podcast.
Podcast: Making Sense of Transgenderism and the Sexual Revolution (Carl Trueman)
Why is our culture obsessed with gender identity and sexuality? Learn what history has to say about our modern times and how Christians can navigate this increasingly hostile issue.
10 Key Bible Verses on Persecution
Jesus suffered and died on behalf of sinners and calls blessed those that follow in his steps for his name’s sake.
The Why behind Rapid Cultural Shifts in Gender Politics
Christians are often prone to focusing on symptoms rather than looking at underlying causes.
Consider Your Money Philosophy
Are we truly using and thinking of money with a Christ-centered heart? These questions will help you evaluate the role of money in your life.
There are eight godly attitudes in Colossians 3:12–14 that are foundational to biblical peacemaking.
The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.
What Does It Mean That God Chose Us before the Foundation of the World? (Ephesians 1)
God’s choice of his people is related to their being predestined to be a part of his family, but predestination is not an end in itself.
Make a Change from Me-ology to Theology
Me-ology prizes you and me. Theology prizes the God of the universe who holds everything together.
How Grace Lets You Have It All
The more you understand the magnitude of God’s grace, the more accurate will be your view of the depth of your unrighteousness; and the more you understand the depth of your unrighteousness, the more you will appreciate the magnitude of God’s gift of grace.
6 Ways to Live in Light of the Serpent-Slayer Story
Jesus is the serpent slayer. So how should a Christian live in light of that thrilling storyline?
10 Key Bible Verses on God’s Sovereignty
When life feels out of control, it can be comforting to remember that we're never out of the sight of our Creator—and he never loses control.
Faith is much more than a one-time decision; it is a lifestyle lived with the presence, promises, and call of God always in view.
Podcast: Covenant Theology 101 (Guy Waters)
How do we understand the biblical covenants, and how can they help us to read Scripture rightly?
Introducing 2 Devotionals from Paul David Tripp
With 40 daily readings, each of these short devotionals encourage Christians to experience the life-giving message of the gospel every day.
9 Notable Quotes from ‘Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy’
Lament gives us a language to express our grief and sorrow to God, while asking him to lead us to deeper trust.
10 Things You Should Know about Covenant Theology
John R. Muether, J. Nicholas Reid, Guy Prentiss Waters
The Bible is a book about God’s plan to glorify himself by saving sinners through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. At every point, Scripture’s covenant theology leads us to Jesus.
The topic of money can be tricky for Christians to navigate. What does the Bible say about it and how ought we to use it to honor God?
10 Key Bible Verses on Anxiety and Worry
God tells us over and over in Scripture to lean on him for what our human strength and ingenuity cannot achieve.
3 Practical Ways to Battle Depression
There are some basic steps we shouldn’t miss before we try and treat anxiety and depression with medication and counseling.
Podcast: How Should Christians Navigate Political Disagreements among Friends? (Jonathan Leeman)
How should Christians think about political disagreements within the church and how much should politics be shared from the pulpit?
3 Causes for Political Tension between Christians
Jonathan Leeman, Andrew David Naselli
What is going on when a disagreements affects your heart’s posture or hinders fellowship with another person in your church?
3 Questions about Blessings and Curses
God’s design has always been for his people to experience the fullness of life in his presence—physically and spiritually.
Perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings concerning the Christian faith is that God is only concerned with “good people.”
Why You Can’t Be a Christian without the Church
A Christian is someone who, by virtue of his reconciliation with God, has been reconciled to God’s people.
Your Salvation Doesn’t Depend on Your Feelings
If our salvation depended upon our feelings, we should be lost one day and saved another, for they are as fickle as the weather.
What Does It Mean to Be Blessed?
Just like themes such as law, sacrifice, and covenant, the theme of blessing must be understood within the full biblical story, if it is to be understood biblically at all.
Podcast: Understanding the Presence of God (Ryan Lister)
What does the Bible say about the presence of God, and how does it relate the Christian life?
How to Cast Out Impure Affection
The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one, and, by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil.
10 Key Bible Verses on Hardship
With the power and presence of Jesus in our lives, we are called to endure and thus shine the light of Christ in a dark world.
Why should you get baptized? Christ not only commands believers to get baptized, baptism is also a gift he graciously gives for our benefit and blessing.
Podcast: The Day I Lost My 3-Year-Old Son (Cameron Cole)
Cameron Cole talks about losing his three-year-old son and how that tragedy and all the suffering it entailed has ultimately strengthened his hope in God.
How Christians Evidence Christ’s Victory
Between the victory on the cross and the present day, and on to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, did God intend that there should be any evidence of the reality of the victory of the cross?
2 Categories of Questions to Ask When Reading the Bible
The worst thing you can do when you read the Bible is to read it passively or thoughtlessly.
How to Pray for the African Church
Major news outlets in the world tend to concentrate on the economic poverty and social deprivation that characterizes much of Africa, but then many believers miss what God is doing in his church across the continent.
11 Notable Quotes from Gospel Fluency
To become fluent in a new language, you must immerse yourself in it until you actually start to think about life through it.
How to Pray When You’re Feeling Anxious
Anxiety may misdirect us, or, properly grasped, may point us to the right path.
Gospel-Centered Leadership: A 12-Day Devotional
Over the course of twelve days, be encouraged by Scripture and wise leadership principles as you seek to become a better leader at home, in your workplace, and in the church.
4 Things to Remember When Meeting with Jesus
Pray, have a plan, be patient, and be positive. You will meet him in his word.
To be converted as a Christian is to have changed your thinking and your believing about Jesus Christ, and to be changed into a person who is no longer an enemy of God but a beloved child of God.
10 Key Bible Verses on Leadership
A leader is to be above reproach, held accountable for the care of those entrusted to them.
How to Pray When You’re Tempted by Sexual Sin
Sexual sin is a matter of the heart. When it comes to sex, we all need to say that the biggest problem in our sexual lives is us.
Podcast: Habits for Better Bible Reading (Drew Hunter)
Drew Hunter discusses advice for Christians eager to reinvigorate, or maybe jumpstart for the first time, a consistent Bible-reading habit.
The Bible is more than just a book about events in history: it’s a unified story.
The Demise of the Deified Self
Truly, we are lost in a darkness of our own making, and we got here by dethroning God and enthroning ourselves. We’ve deified ourselves. And it’s led to our demise.
3 Ways to Prepare for the Battles of Ministry
How do we strategize together as leadership communities for the battle?
Learning from the Life and Death of Stephen
This is the way all of us want to live and die. We want to live full of faith and the Holy Spirit.
God has given us work to do faithfully and joyfully—with both our minds and our hands.
Free Download: Printable Verse Cards Tracing God's Unfolding Grace
Download these free printables for memorizing and meditating on God's word.
7 Tips for Reading the Bible with Another Person
Reading the Bible, like eating a meal, isn’t only for individual consumption. Some of the greatest joys come when we enjoy God and his word together with others.
7 Ways to Use ‘Unfolding Grace’ in Your Church
Many Christians know key doctrines or various texts within the Bible, but they often miss the sweep of the Bible’s big story and how it connects to Christ.
Depression Isn’t a Modern Problem
Depression has been around since the fall, and the Bible gives examples of even the greatest people who suffered from depression.
Does God Single Out the Sin of Homosexuality? (Romans 1)
While in recent years same-sex relations have been glamorized in some sectors of society, Jesus confirmed that God’s will for marriage has always been lifelong heterosexual monogamy.
On the side of God’s infinity, there is a complete chasm between God on one side and man, the animal, the flower, and the machine on the other. On the side of God’s infinity, He stands alone.
Podcast: How I Study the Bible (Lauren Chandler)
Lauren Chandler shares her Bible study and reading habits and how Scripture has impacted her personal life and work as a songwriter.
The best self-care habits, not only for the Christian but for any human being, lead us back to our Maker and Savior.
Infographic: 4 Biblical Ways to Pray
How do you pray biblically? Paul Miller outlines four ways to help you pray biblical prayers.
What Did Jesus Teach about Politics?
If we take the lordship of Christ in our lives seriously, then we should seek to apply that lordship to our participation in politics.
10 Questions about Spiritual Gifts
Spiritual gifts are capacities or abilities imparted to Christians by the Holy Spirit to enable them to exceed the limitations of their finite humanity in order to serve other believers to the glory of God.
What Does It Mean to Be a Man in the Home?
Andreas J. Köstenberger, Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger
Men are to be worshipers, disciples, witnesses, husbands and fathers, leaders, providers, and protectors.
We Need Another Storyline to Put Ours in Perspective
Orienting ourselves by stories involves using their storylines to put our lives in proper perspective.
What does the Bible teach about how to make decisions and discern God's will in the life of believers?
Doctrine is a body of teaching. Christian doctrine is the teaching found in the Bible—about who God is, who we are, and why the world exists.
Free Audiobook: How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics?
Free audiobook available of 'How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics?' by Jonathan Leeman and Andy Naselli read by
What Is Anxiety vs. Depression?
It's important to realize that anxiety and depression are different while being careful to realize that they do sometimes overlap.
Podcast: Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad about Enjoying the World (Joe Rigney)
What does it look like to love God and enjoy this world? Are the two in contention with each other?
9 Tips for Making the Most of Your Bible Study
The more we are pulled in different directions, the more we have to work to guard the time we give to personal study of our Bibles.
4 Ways Baseball Fuels Supernatural Joy
How does my natural joy in baseball become a supernatural joy in God? That’s the question Christian Hedonists ask.
Don’t Neglect Worship to Enjoy the Earth
Our lives ought to be structured by regular rhythms of direct and indirect godwardness, moving back and forth between direct interaction with God himself and active engagement with the world.
4 Qualities of God-Honoring Work
Your vocation, be it ever so humble, is a divine calling, and thus must be done for the glory of God. This alone will take the church out into the world.
What the Apostle Paul Teaches Us about Suffering
When God called Paul from being the church’s persecutor to be a gospel preacher, the Lord showed him how much he would suffer for the sake of his name.
10 Key Bible Verses on Humility
Christ set the ultimate example of humility by submitting himself to life on earth and then death on the cross on behalf of sinners.
Doing good and being rich in good works and being generous and ready to share aren’t just about money.
Podcast: Asking God "Why" in the Midst of Suffering (Mark Talbot)
Is it okay to ask God why when suffering? What do you do when you go through profound suffering?
Suffering and Hope in the Time of COVID-19
In these circumstances, we may find ourselves wondering, Where is God? How can these things be happening if God is perfectly good and all-powerful? Can’t he stop them? Doesn’t he want to?
Why Jesus Cannot Be One Truth among Many
Jesus claims rule over all of heaven and earth. He presents himself not as one possible path to God, but as God himself.
When it comes to family discipleship, low-hanging fruit is everywhere. Family discipleship does not have to be intricate or complicated.
10 Things You Should Know about Family Discipleship
In Jesus's call to make disciples everywhere and to teach his commandments entirely, we can be absolutely sure that this imperative includes those disciples we will make in our own homes.
Excellent Revelations through Ordinary Means
As was typical among the Puritans, the Lord’s Supper is seen not simply as a memory aid, but an occasion in which Christ is present among his people through the Holy Spirit.
12 Reasons You Might Not Feel Like Going to Church
There are many reasons Christians might not feel like going to church. But if you can discern the reason behind your reluctance, the path forward becomes clearer.
4 Reasons for Hope in Suffering
In our suffering God is at work to give us something much better than what we want.
10 Key Bible Verses on Discipleship
Christ calls us to himself and then invites us to lead others to follow him in obedience and trust. We are called disciples when we love each other in this way.
Why Christians Depend on Revelation from God
Christianity is a religion that rests on revelation: nobody would know the truth about God, or be able to relate to him in a personal way, had not God first acted to make himself known.
When it comes to family discipleship, low-hanging fruit is everywhere. Family discipleship does not have to be intricate or complicated.
10 Things You Should Know about Family Discipleship
In Jesus's call to make disciples everywhere and to teach his commandments entirely, we can be absolutely sure that this imperative includes those disciples we will make in our own homes.
Over the course of 10 days, dig deeper into the book of Esther and learn how God is faithful to keep his promises and deliver his people.
Why Study the Books of 1–3 John
The more divisive, the more stressful, the more anxious, and the more lonely our society grows, the more compelling the need becomes for a clear exhortation to love.
12 Notable Quotes from Confronting Christianity
The gospel challenges some of our culture’s deepest beliefs and can prompt a lot of questions, yet we are called to make a defense for our hope.
Podcast: Tips for Leading an Effective Bible Study (Lydia Brownback)
What does it look like to lead an effective Bible study? How can a leader keep the conversation on track and guide people to discover the treasures of God's Word?
How to Read (and Not Read) the Bible
We have to read the Bible as literature, but we also have to recognize that it is unlike any other book we know.
Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?
There are two ways to consider the question of propositional revelation and infallibility. Until the first is in place, the second cannot be sensibly pursued.
The Little ‘C’ Catholic Church Explained
Most people associate the word “catholic” with the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, when used with a little c, the word simply means worldwide or universal.
How the Psalms Teach Us to Sing
God’s people have always been a singing people. There must be a robust expression of our testimony to his grace, something not just seen in our lives but heard from our voices.
Truth in relationships, especially between Christians, is divinely commanded and truth telling is integral to godliness.
Help for Discerning God’s Will
There are several things that can be taken into account in a cumulative way to help us know what God is guiding us to do.
Podcast: Hymns and the Joy of Singing (Kristyn Getty)
What are hymns, and how are they still relevant in a Christian's life today? What are the benefits of learning hymns and congregational singing?
4 Questions about Parenting and Screen Time
If we intend to teach our children how to appropriately enjoy, but not abuse, time in front of a screen, we must check our own hearts and habits first.
4 Reasons We Need a Biblical View of Humanity
When we consider the view of personhood presented in Scripture, the question of whether we are mere brain machines or something more becomes a gospel question.
Why Death Is the Final Stage of Salvation
Death often brings reality to light. When individuals are thrown onto their last resources, they show where their true hopes lay.
How to Pray When You’re Feeling Depressed
During seasons of depression or anxiety, most of us find it hard to concentrate, we feel God is far away, and we despair of God hearing us or helping us.
12 Notable Quotes from Enough about Me
Self-care may produce happiness and temporary relief from stress or hardship, but real joy comes when we stop serving ourselves and find meaning and purpose in something outside of ourselves.
Ask for Grace and Go to Church
The reasons you don’t feel like going to church might be good, bad, or ugly. But, as a fellow sheep loved by the same Shepherd, I’m asking you to trust God, ask for grace, and go.
John Owen’s Ministry to Young Christians
John Owen specialized in ministry to young people, though that’s not how he tends to be remembered.
3 Lies Women Believe about Serving
It’s difficult to steward our time, talents, and treasure well in a world that invites us to self-satisfaction and self-fulfillment.
Why Mentoring Is Better than Asking Alexa
In our digital age, it’s helpful to remember the importance of real-life relationships and the benefits of older believers in the faith who can offer us wisdom, presence, and pursuit.
10 Things You Should Know about John Owen
Now more than ever, it’s time to pick up Owen and find his encouragement for the Christian life.
Why Computers Can Never Replace the Human Brain
If we are not just machines, but spiritual beings as well, even the cleverest computer could never replicate the priceless and wondrous imago dei borne by every human.
Podcast: How Confronting Death Helps Us Live (Matthew McCullough)
How can thinking and being really honest about the reality of death paradoxically free us to find hope and joy in God like never before?
10 Key Bible Verses on Strength
Call on God for help and strength when yours is lacking, and be encouraged by his sufficiency.
Finding Contentment in Singleness
If you’re over the age of twenty-five and single, surely by now you’ve experienced at least some of the challenges of living an uncoupled life.
J. I. Packer: In His Own Words
As we look back on the life of J. I. Packer, join us in thanking God for his humble writing ministry and the legacy of his service to the church.
Sin causes us to deny our need for God and others. Sin causes us to assign to ourselves the wisdom, strength, and righteousness we do not have.
Podcast: The Life and Legacy of J. I. Packer (Sam Storms)
Sam Storms reflects on Packer's remarkable life and ministry, including how Packer came to faith and the impact that his many books have had on generations of Christians.
10 Things You Should Know about J. I. Packer
Learn about a man from humble origin who the Lord has used in mighty ways.
Retirement presents a new freedom to live your life according to your God-given priorities.
11 Practical Ways to Reduce Digital Consumption
If we can get digital technology under control, we will do so much better—physically, intellectually, relationally, vocationally, educationally, financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
Don’t Quit the Everyday Work of Marriage
Why do we quit paying attention? Because it is hard work to care, it is hard work to discipline ourselves to be careful, and it is hard work to always be thinking of another person.
10 Things You Should Know about Prayer
It’s easy to complicate prayer; but at its essence, prayer is simply talking with God.
9 Notable Quotes from Coronavirus and Christ
The only firm foundation we have in an unpredictable world is the rock of Jesus Christ.
Help! My Teen Is Struggling with Anxiety
Go to God and ask him to lead you into more understanding of the various factors involved in your child’s suffering: physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and social.
How to Pray When You’re Feeling Anxious or Depressed
During seasons of depression or anxiety, most of us find it hard to concentrate, we feel God is far away, and we despair of God hearing us or helping us.
11 Practical Ways to Reduce Digital Consumption
If we can get digital technology under control, we will do so much better—physically, intellectually, relationally, vocationally, educationally, financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
3 Questions about Small Groups
We should be asking ourselves if we act like family members of the church and whether or not our participation in the church strengthens or weakens it.
Why We Can’t Lament without Listening
When it comes to loaded subjects like racism or ethnic tension, too often believers fall into the familiar ditches of denial or despair.
Lament: An Open Door for Racial Reconciliation
Most Christians are not sure what to do about racial reconciliation. There are some whose hearts are sinfully closed, but I think most Christians simply lack the tools.
Help! I Don’t Know Where to Start with Racial Reconciliation
Lament doesn't solve all the problems of racial disharmony. It’s not without risk. But it helps.
Why Moralistic Therapeutic Deism Is a Dead End
It's very easy to shelve God and decide we don't really need him, that we just need to believe in ourselves and to invent who we are and what we want to do.
An Open Letter to the Pastor Desiring Racial Reconciliation in the Church
Reconciliation—vertical and horizontal—is the goal of the good news. Gospel unity creates racial harmony.
Why We Need a Paradigm Shift about Money
We need a brand-new way of thinking about money, a way that is rooted in the gospel story and its narrative of the lavish grace of God.
5 Questions about Mental Illness
Mental illness is an old problem; as old as the fall. Although God made everything very good, when sin entered, humanity—together with the rest of the creation—came under the divine curse.
What Does It Mean That an Elder Must Be the Husband of One Wife? (1 Timothy 3)
One’s gifting is certainly a consideration (“able to teach”), but it is not the whole, or even the main thing, that Paul is looking for in an overseer.
3 Threats to the Mission of Small Groups
There are some common sins that keep us from living missional lives: apathy, indifference, and fear of man.
Podcast: Learning from the Church Fathers (Michael Haykin)
What can we learn from the early church fathers and how can early Christian creeds help us define our faith today?
10 Key Bible Verses on Serving
Christ set the ultimate example of service and sacrifice when he condescended to us and submitted to death on our behalf.
The Mission Field I Never Expected
For those of us who are parents, God wants us to esteem the field he’s given us. It’s not a tiring distraction from the true mission field we should be tilling.
8 Notable Quotes from Women of the Word
If it is true that we become what we behold, we must devote the time to learn how to dig into Scripture with our hearts and minds.
Is There Such a Thing as Race?
It is a healthy sign to wish that the term “race” did not exist. It has not served well to enhance human relations.
Help! I Find Myself Perpetually Discontent
Contentment is something that we, as Christians, must regularly work to cultivate. By not working on our contentment, we are working on our discontentment.
The realities of hell give us all the reasons in the world to persuade sinners to put their faith in the one who experienced hellish despair on the cross.
Podcast: What If I Don’t Feel Like Going to Church? (Gunner Gundersen)
What do we do when we just don't feel like gathering with God's people in corporate worship, and how has the pandemic affected us in this area?
10 Key Bible Verses on Obedience
We are no longer under Old Testament law; but as believers, we are still marked by our obedience to Christ.
10 Notable Quotes from New Morning Mercies
As sinners in need of grace, we can find comfort and rest knowing that God’s mercy toward us is new at the break of each day.
The most rebellious, countercultural thing you can do in our culture is to be happily married until death do you part.
Double listening . . . is the faculty of listening to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the voices of men and women around us.
10 Things You Should Know about John Stott
What do you know about the life of John Stott? Do you know about the various facets of his ministry? It can sometimes feel as if Stott lived a dozen lives.
What John Stott Learned about Theology from Bird-Watching
Stott’s obsession with the snowy owl was more than a charming eccentricity. It reflected some important themes in his theology.
Podcast: Thinking Biblically about Transgenderism (Denny Burk)
How should Christians think about transgenderism, and how should we talk to our kids about it? What does the Bible teach on gender and sexuality?
An Open Letter to Daughters on Father’s Day
Our heavenly Father has good news for each and every one of us, as well as fatherly gifts in store.
Mary J. Moerbe, Gene Edward Veith Jr.
Scripture is clear that all earthly fatherhood finds its origin in our heavenly Father, but it also reveals more than that.
Help! I Can’t Stay Consistent with My Bible Reading
God is working in and through the daily, faithful, consistent discipline of Bible reading—even if it’s hard to see it in the moment.
Hope for When Sanctification Feels Slow
You’re a new creation. So sanctification is a reality, affected by how obedient and willing we really are.
How to Root out Apathy with the Power of Habit
Practicing spiritual disciplines may feel like work at first. Establishing new habits always presses against our apathy in uncomfortable ways.
Will God’s Wrath Come upon the Sexually Immoral? (Ephesians 5)
Not everyone who commits these sins is excluded from God’s heavenly kingdom. Yet, those who persistently give themselves over to them demonstrate that they are indeed excluded from eternal life.
Podcast: How to Pursue Meaningful Mentoring Relationships (Melissa Kruger)
What are some core aspects that should be in place in every mentoring relationship, and how can we build relationships that actually help others follow Christ?
Practical Faithfulness in the Throes of Motherhood
Know that God’s mercy abounds every morning, and his grace covers you. The Lord loves you, he is working toward your spiritual growth, and he is not done sanctifying you.
4 Tips for Discipling Younger Women
Older women are to be faithful examples as they teach younger women. As you think about Paul's message to older women, consider these questions from the book of Titus.
5 Questions about Sanctification
Knowing that you are a beloved child does not leave you complacent and self-satisfied.
What to Look for in a Spiritual Mentor
A spiritual mentoring relationship is one where a younger believer is tethered to a more mature believer for a season so that he or she might grow stronger in faith and be equipped for ministry.
12 Notable Quotes from Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel
Marriage was created to evidence Christ’s love for his bride, the church. Our earthly relationships, though marred by our sin, can point us toward this true and ultimate reality.
How to Pray When Your Heart Feels Cold
Many Christians experience seasons of spiritual apathy when the heart seems miles behind what we know to be true in our minds.
10 Obligations Christians Have to Scripture
John MacArthur, Richard Mayhue
Throughout his New Testament writings, the apostle John summarized a Christian’s obligation to obey the Scriptures. He made it clear that walking in the ways of the word was not optional.
10 Things You Should Know about the Church after COVID-19
In all the important ways, nothing has changed about church. We are still the people of God, gathered in the presence of God, to bring glory to God.
Podcast: Using Stories to Help Kids Understand Right and Wrong (Betsy Childs Howard)
Why are stories such powerful tools for instilling deep, biblical truths in our kids? Are moral formation and the gospel of grace mutually exclusive?
Podcast: A First Step toward Racial Reconciliation (Mark Vroegop)
How does the biblical practice of lament offer Christians from different backgrounds a common language for productive, God-honoring conversations about race?
A Prayer for Racial Reconciliation
Divisions of mistrust and historical bias run deep. Without God, nothing will ever change. In our pain and our weariness, we know that only Jesus can change our hearts and unite the church.
Why Ordinary Faithfulness Is Enough
Feeding your faithfulness is an unremarkable practice in real-time. It’s unglamorous by the world’s standards, yet it is precious as it contributes to a life of holding fast to Christ.
Podcast: Learning to Love the Local Church (Megan Hill)
Why is the local church so important and essential for our spiritual growth as Christians—especially in the time of COVID-19?
10 Key Bible Verses on Salvation
Because of Christ, believers are granted salvation from sin and the promise of eternal life. What hope we have in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus!
How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell?
Jesus is not separable from the God whose wrath he faces on the cross, so he is not separable from us, if we but put our trust in him.
How to Grieve Racial Violence through Lament
Rather than allowing racial tension to drive a wedge between us or to frighten us into silence, lament can invite all of us on a journey toward seeking God’s grace together.
12 Notable Quotes from 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You
Technology is not itself bad, nor is it innocuous. Though we’re not all aware of how we are being changed by our digital habits, we are being changed nonetheless.
8 Notable Quotes from What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?
God’s word addresses how we, as Christians, should think about sexuality and offers us hope and wisdom for navigating today’s cultural landscape with humility and grace.
God’s Plan for Your Discontentment
There is room for the power of Christ to rest on you in such a way that it will give you the strength to be content even as you continue to live your life in the wilderness of this world.
Podcast: Are Christians More Divided Now Than Ever? (Rhyne Putman)
How should Christians think about theological diversity and gracefully disagree within the body of Christ?
9 Ways Emotions Play a Role in Theological Diversity
Because human beings are complex creatures with reason, will, and emotion, no reductionistic scheme can explain why we reason or why we dissent the way we do.
How to Honor the Lord with Your Summer Vacation
When you take your vacation time, how do you reflect your priorities and honor the Lord?
We Read the Bible to Commune with God
We know God for who he is, and meet him as he is, when we meet him through his word—the Bible.
9 Notable Quotes from The Gospel Comes with a House Key
The Bible teaches that hospitality is not an option, but a requirement, for Christians. In opening our doors, we have the opportunity to shine the light of Christ in dark places.
A 7-Step Approach to In-Depth Bible Study
Studying God’s word is worth all the effort we can give, because it is God’s voice to us, making us wise for salvation and equipped for a life of love.
Do You Orient Yourself Toward Others?
The discipling life is an others-oriented life. It labors in the power of God to proclaim Christ and present others mature in Christ.
How Social Media Worsens Theological Divides
Rather than rushing to refute every theological misstep, we must exercise patience and grace toward those who disagree with us.
10 Key Bible Verses on Wisdom and Discernment
Wisdom is, first and foremost, from the Lord. When you desire wisdom, be encouraged to go to him and his word in prayer.
Podcast: Understanding the World of the Bible through Archaeology (David Chapman)
How can archaeology bolster our faith and enhance our understanding of the Bible?
4 Ways Paul Encourages Us to Love the Church (Even When It’s Hard)
Like it did for Paul, the truth should shape us, so that belonging to an ordinary gathering of unremarkable people becomes one of the highest joys and greatest privileges of our lives.
Fasting = Homesickness for God
Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.
How Baptism Changes Our Status
Baptism declares that you are in Christ. You have died with him and risen with him.
There Are No Unimportant Parts of the Church
The Spirit gives exactly the right gifts in exactly the right measure at exactly the right time to exactly the right people for the well-being of the local church.
10 Key Bible Verses on Patience
God is unendingly patient with us, his children. In turn, we can exhibit grace and patience with others through the help of the Holy Spirit.
Introducing Exploring the Bible Together
Help your family establish regular devotions through realistic aims, a clear plan and direction, and stimulating interaction with Scripture and prayer.
Mundane with the Chance of Miraculous
The dirty dishes are not my biggest problem in life, even though it seems like they are. The biggest problem in my life and yours is sin.
An Open Letter to Husbands on Mother’s Day
The fact that Mother’s Day may have secular origins does not mean that it can’t be used by Christian husbands to remind us of biblical principles related to our mothers and wives.
Waiting on the Lord Is Not a Waste
You’re not doing anything, but God is. Waiting is one of the greatest applications of the Christian faith.
Help! My Kids Seem Uninterested in Family Worship
Do your kids try to avoid family worship? Do they find excuses not to be there? Do they obviously dread it and groan when you reach for the Bible?
Coronavirus and the Second Coming of Christ
Even though the history of the Christian church is littered with failed predictions of the end of the world, it remains true that Jesus Christ is coming back.
Pride is a sin because of its self-centered, rather than God-centered, perspective on life.
How God Helps Us Pray according to His Will
Our focus is on God through prayer; our glance is at the Bible; and we turn Godward and pray about every matter that occurs to us as we read.
Why Christians Must Remain Dissatisfied
The Christian is not merely a man who knows now that he’s been forgiven, and that’s the end of it all. Not at all. That’s merely the introduction.
My friend, as you are united to Christ and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is applied to your life, you will experience the change that you long for.
3 Ways to Root Your Marriage in Worship
Where will you find the reasons to continue working on your marriage in those disappointing moments when those reasons are most needed? Well, you won’t find them in your spouse.
Podcast: Where Is God in Suffering? (Ligon Duncan)
How can Christians can face profound life-changing suffering with their faith intact and find encouragement from God's word in the midst of a season of intense pain?
It’s the Spirit who brings life to our spirits and enables us to know, love, and worship God the Father through Jesus Christ.
6 Questions about Christ’s Heart for Sinners
We cannot present a reason for Christ to finally close off his heart to his own sheep. No such reason exists.
Abortion and the Forgiveness of God
Have you confessed your sin to God and acknowledged that it was wrong? His word says that he is faithful to forgive your sins.
5 Prompts for Journaling through Scripture
As you spend time reading and journaling through the Bible, consider these five prompts to guide your study and reflection.
Introducing a Bible Study Resource for Kids
Learn more about this resource designed to lead children ages 6–12 to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
Podcast: Rethinking Multiservice and Multisite Church (Jonathan Leeman)
Do multiservice and multisite church models run counter to the pattern for the local church we see in the New Testament?
8 Bible Reading Habits to Establish as a Young Person
How can we establish healthy Bible-reading habits so that we are connected to God, have a God-centered worldview, grow in confident faith, and enjoy spiritual peace and confidence?
4 Ways to Practice Theological Humility
Our zeal for theology must never exceed our zeal for our actual brothers and sisters in Christ. We must be marked by love.
5 Questions about the Sanctity of Life
What does the Bible really teach about abortion and the sanctity of human life?
3 Doctrines That Sustain Us in Suffering
While we may not understand what God is doing, we can always trust who he is. We must never interpret God’s character by our circumstances.
An Open Letter to Those Who Divide over Doctrine
We live in polarized times. Outrage and rancor seem to be simmering all around us, and it’s making it harder to talk across ideological lines.
God’s grace sustains us, even in the darkest hours, so that we never give up. Psalm 88 offers four lessons of hope.
Podcast: Does Jesus Really Like Me? (Dane Ortlund)
What does Scripture say about God's disposition towards us as redeemed sinners? What does it mean that Jesus is "gentle and lowly in heart"?
Exercise Spiritually as You Exercise Physically
Why should we Christian women turn our attention to the disciplines that will train us for godliness? In today's culture, disciplined Christian lives are the exception, not the rule.
Loving Others through Political Difference
Jonathan Leeman, Andrew David Naselli
What is wisdom? It’s a capacity of mind that combines the fear of the Lord with the skill of living in God’s created but fallen world in a way that yields justice, peace, and flourishing.
Sometimes we end up disappointed with Jesus because we want the miracle, the answer, the reconciliation, the restoration, the healing right now.
10 Notable Quotes from Gentle and Lowly
The gospel flows from God’s deepest heart for his people, a heart of tender love for the sinful and suffering.
Jesus’s Troubled Family History
If you have no hope to be accepted into God’s family other than the perfect record of your righteous brother, Jesus, then you can be sure you’ve found your forever-family.
For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.
Jesus’s Troubled Family History
If you have no hope to be accepted into God’s family other than the perfect record of your righteous brother, Jesus, then you can be sure you’ve found your forever-family.
The Scoundrels of Scripture: A 6-Day Video Devotional
Learn from the stories of a handful of the Bible’s scoundrels and see more clearly the ways in which they reveal the generous grace of Jesus toward sinners.
We all long for the restoration that will come when God gives us new, resurrected bodies. But we don’t have those bodies yet.
If God sent his own Son to walk through the valley of condemnation, rejection, and hell, you can trust him as you walk through your own valleys on your way to heaven.
Podcast: The Scoundrels of Scripture (Nancy Guthrie)
What can we learn from some of the less well-loved characters of Scripture? Why is Jesus's scandalous family tree good news for sinners like us?
The Reason We Don't Feel the Weight of Our Sin
Just as we can hardly fathom the divine ferocity awaiting those out of Christ, it is equally true that we can hardly fathom the divine tenderness already resting now on those in Christ.
Jesus isn’t like you. Even the most intense of human love is but the faintest echo of heaven’s cascading abundance.
10 Key Bible Verses on Death and Resurrection
God’s Word paints a picture of a future when death will be swallowed up in Christ’s victory on the cross and where believers will live eternally with him.
It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God’s deepest heart is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger.”
Praying in Jesus’s name is an acknowledgement of our total dependence on his provision. We push away from any personal claim on God’s blessing and lean entirely on Christ’s provision.
All our human friendships have a limit to what they can withstand. But what if there were a friend with no limit?
John Piper’s Prayer for the COVID-19 Pandemic
Grant recovery. Grant a cure. Deliver us—your poor, helpless creatures—from these sorrows, we pray.
The Hidden Value of Pastoral Gentleness
As leaders of God’s people, we all long to make a difference for Christ. We don’t want to be unfruitful. The main reason to nurture gentleness is neither pragmatic nor historical, but biblical.
The whole reason we care about sound doctrine is for the sake of preserving God’s beauty,
Do not minimize your sin or excuse it away. Raise no defense. Simply take it to the one who is already at the right hand of the Father, advocating for you on the basis of his own wounds.
Are You Conveying the Loveliness of Christ to Your Kids?
Do our kids know the thing that will sustain and oxygenate them when other vital needs go unmet?
The doctrine of the atonement reassures us with what Christ has done in the past, the doctrine of his intercession reassures us with what he is doing in the present.
Just as we can hardly fathom the divine ferocity awaiting those out of Christ, it is equally true that we can hardly fathom the divine tenderness already resting now on those in Christ.
4 Things that Make the Bible Literary
The subject of literature is human experience. We should read the Bible through that lens.
Podcast: Gracefully Dealing with Doctrinal Disagreement (Gavin Ortlund)
What should Christians do when they disagree over doctrine?
Is the Bible’s Teaching about Homosexuality Offensive?
Jesus is sometimes caricatured as a prophet of free love, unconcerned about sexual ethics. But his teaching on sexual morality was consistently stricter than the Old Testament law.
Living with the Enemy That Is Sin
The greatest victory in David’s life was not a victory of David’s at all, but, rather, God’s victory of grace over the sin that had captivated David’s heart.
The atoning work of the Son, decreed by the Father and applied by the Spirit, ensures that we are safe eternally.
5 Ways the COVID-19 Pandemic Points Us to the Gospel
When we are weary and distraught, we have a place to go. Jesus welcomes us to come to him and cast our cares on him.
Rather than dispensing grace to us from on high, Jesus gets down with us, he puts his arm around us, he deals with us in the way that is just what we need.
Scripture tells us that we cannot serve two masters and that the love of money is the root of all evil. What is the proper way to use our money for the glory of God and the good of others?
It is in “our weaknesses” that Jesus sympathizes with us. His is a love that cannot be held back when he sees his people in pain.
God Cares about Beauty (and We Should, Too)
God has implanted in people longing and desire for the true, the good, and the beautiful. The Bible speaks to all three of these.
Fear Not, Your Future Is Secure
No matter how hard your story is right here, right now, it is guaranteed for you as God’s child that it will end better that you can imagine.
When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.
How Pride Undermines the Joy of Confession
Confession is like the gateway to freedom. As we confess, repent, and own the wrong things that we have done, we move forward with a lightness of heart.
When Jesus, the Clean One, touched an unclean sinner, Christ did not become unclean. The sinner became clean.
The Importance of Lament in the Midst of COVID-19
The more you know about lament, the more things really come alive to you in reading Jeremiah's lament. His lament is so relevant to the suffering that we’re going through right now.
You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.
Gentle and Lowly: A 14-Day Podcast
Join Dane Ortlund for a 14-day audio devotional to discover the true heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers.
Podcast: Are You Aware of Your Own Blind Spots? (Collin Hansen)
What problems with our lives, priorities, and even theology do we not recognize? What would it look like to wake up to our own blind spots and to lovingly engage with those with whom we disagree?
10 Key Bible Verses on Endurance
The Christian life requires strength, fortitude, and endurance. The path marked out for believers is never promised to be easy or smooth.
Two of Prayer’s Essential Ingredients
The resurrection is the most important thing to behold in God’s word to fuel our desire to pray. But really, we need all of God’s word. We also need God’s people.
We May Be Confused, but God Isn’t
As much as we try to make sense of our lives, there are things that we simply aren’t able to understand.
Pastor, Are You Growing in Submission to Scripture?
God’s leaders are to be people who are growing in submission to Scripture. Their daily lives are to reflect and exemplify the scriptures that they teach.
The Bible presents the greatest story ever told: the ultimate good-versus-evil storyline—the great cosmic battle between God and Satan.
Faith is a necessary part of the Christian life and allows us to live as people of hope, even when we cannot always see the fruits of our hope.
With our course marked out for learning contentment, let’s think about how we might evaluate where we are in our own personal progress.
Practice Hospitality, Especially during COVID-19
Christians know that the dread of death can only be met by the redemption in Jesus Christ, so we need to proclaim Christ into a COVID-19 world.
Don’t Just Teach—Teach Your Church to Love God’s Word
There are three things to bear in mind when trying to grow a church in the conviction that the Bible is worth studying over a lifetime.
A Christian Doctor Answers Questions about COVID-19
Read answers to common questions related to COVID-19 from a Christian physician.
Free Resources for Your Stay at Home during COVID-19
When many families are reorienting their lives and schedules around more time at home, we hope you will find these resources helpful in grounding you in the hope of the gospel.
Podcast: A Christian Doctor’s Guide to Thinking about Coronavirus (Bob Cutillo, MD)
A Christian doctor discusses the current coronavirus pandemic, explaining what's currently happening in the US and around the world and offering perspective on how we should think about this virus.
If only we could depend on something more than the power of our thinking and the tools we possess to stand between us and disaster.
Help! My Teen Struggles with Self-Image
From its beginning, the self-esteem movement has been crushing. And the movement hasn’t dissipated over the last generation or two, it has only intensified.
What Is Successful Evangelism?
Following Christ means loving those who don’t follow Jesus, and that love includes sharing the gospel.
12 Prayer Ideas for New Believers
Praying regularly is hard work. So how do we develop the discipline of a healthy prayer life?
8 Reminders in the Face of the Coronavirus Pandemic
These are strange days, days of fear, days of hysteria. In other words, days that simply bring all our latent anxieties up to the surface.
Introducing the Church Questions Series
Church Questions booklets answer common questions about the local church and what it means for the daily life of a Christian.
I’m passionate that every Christian display the gospel in their lives, which is why I’m passionate about church membership.
We can learn what and how to pray to God from his very Word—even from the example of his own Son.
Lacking Assurance of Salvation? Join a Church
You don’t join a church in order to be saved, but you may want to join the church to help you in making certain that you are saved.
10 Key Bible Verses on Courage
The Christian life isn’t guaranteed to be without struggle and strife—and it undoubtedly requires courage. God’s Word invites us to trust in God’s power and strength, and not our own.
Podcast: 8 Questions to Ask Every Time You Open Your Bible (Matthew Harmon)
Questions we should ask when studying the Bible to help us get at the true meaning of Scripture, and how to apply it to our lives today.
The Origins of the Self-Esteem Movement
People threw off the shackles of the church and the state and they began to look inward. They began to look to themselves for what is true and what is real.
Jesus said that it is out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). What comes out of your heart displays what’s in it and what has captured it.
A Christian Perspective on International Women’s Day
As the world takes a moment to applaud women and girls in various ways, may we Christians be the biggest champions, the loudest cheerers, and the most proactive supporters of women.
A Personal vs. Private Relationship with Christ
As we've prioritized our personal relationship with Christ, we've also privatized it.
What Did Jesus Teach about Men and Women?
Christ not only valued women very highly, but also demonstrated a clear role distinction between men and women.
How to Guard against a Self-Centered Relationship with Jesus
Often without warning or intention, the drive to know ourselves becomes all-consuming. It’s impossible to not be affected by the age of self in which we currently live.
You Need a Theology of Uncomfortable Grace
Mourning acknowledges that the world is not the way God meant it to be. Mourning cries out for God’s redeeming, restoring hand.
Make a Change from Me-ology to Theology
Me-ology prizes you and me. Theology prizes the God of the universe who holds everything together.
Help! My Teen Struggles with Self-Image
From its beginning, the self-esteem movement has been crushing. And the movement hasn’t dissipated over the last generation or two, it has only intensified.
Why Moralistic Therapeutic Deism Is a Dead End
It's very easy to shelve God and decide we don't really need him, that we just need to believe in ourselves and to invent who we are and what we want to do.
The Origins of the Self-Esteem Movement
People threw off the shackles of the church and the state and they began to look inward. They began to look to themselves for what is true and what is real.
How to Guard Against a Self-Centered Relationship with Jesus
Often without warning or intention, the drive to know ourselves becomes all-consuming. It’s impossible to not be affected by the age of self in which we currently live.
A Personal vs. Private Relationship with Christ
As we've prioritized our personal relationship with Christ, we've also privatized it.
An Open Letter to the New Christian
Now that you're a Christian, what do you in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead? Here are a few practical suggestions as you seek to follow the Lord.
Podcast: The Danger in Being a Self-Made Woman (Jen Oshman)
What does it look like to pursue real fulfillment in God, rather than in ourselves? And what's wrong with the self-obsessed, individualistic culture that dominates our world today?
An Open Letter to the Younger Women of the Church
Let’s talk about why we should take the Titus mandate seriously and not miss God’s rich provisions for our growth in grace.
Christian Hope Changes Everything
We can rest because our choices don’t actually have the final say in any sphere—God has the final say.
5 Guiding Principles for Church Elders
God has called elders to be men worth imitating. A healthy local church typically has many people, men and women, whose example we could follow.
An Open Letter to the Older Women in the Church
Older women, read Titus 2, and be encouraged to embrace your calling to train younger women in the church.
Podcast: Are Christians Obligated to Give 10%? (Sam Storms)
What does the Bible teaches about tithing? Are Christians still obligated to give 10% of their income today?
4 Crucial Truths the Gospel Presents
Perhaps more clearly than any other book of the Bible, Romans contains a deliberate, step-by-step expression of what Paul understood to be the good news.
Why Living for God Depends on Good Theology
We live for Christ because Christ lived and died for us. But we are not able to maintain a Christ-focused life apart from being “Spirit energized.”
God Blesses Holiness, Not Pastoral Talent
If you’re not cleansed from the things that corrupt your life, you’re not a vessel fit for the Master’s use.
Parents, Your Kids Need Big Theology
Let them grow into understanding the big truths of Scripture by building a foundation that will shape and guide them as they learn and understand the big words and the big theology of the gospel.
Podcast: The Freeing Reality that You Are Not Enough (Jen Wilkin)
Jen Wilkin discusses God-given limits as created beings, reflecting on why the common refrain that we should look inside ourselves for meaning and purpose is so misguided.
4 Examples of How Knowing Original Greek Improves Your Understanding of the Text
God’s word is powerful. When reading our Bible we hear his voice. However, it does not mean that Scripture is always easy to understand.
We are convinced in our heart of hearts that love is a feeling, but God’s word says nothing of the sort.
Pastor: Is Your Holiness a Priority?
There's diminishing interest in holiness and godliness among this generation of younger pastors because of pragmatism.
10 Key Bible Verses on Marriage
Be encouraged from God's Word about his plan and purpose for marital relationships.
An Open Letter to the Single Person on Valentine’s Day
You are completely valued and treasured just as you are because the Being running this massive universe is, in fact, a personal Being and he loves you wholly and completely.
God speaks in light of who he is and what he has done, and we respond back to God.
The same grace that saves sinners from the penalty of their sin also instructs them in holiness.
Podcast: Navigating Conflict in Marriage (Christopher Ash)
Christopher Ash shares biblical wisdom and practical advice for couples working through disagreements related to money, sex, and kids.
10 Things You Should Know about Baptism
A sacrament is a covenant sign that is appropriate to the promises made by God in his covenant.
Norman L. Geisler, Frank Turek
Many non-Christians take a “blind leap of faith” that their non-Christian beliefs are true simply because they want them to be true.
Creeds and confessions are useful only to the extent that they reproduce faithfully the teaching of Scripture itself.
Help! I Can’t Get Control over My Tongue
There is an intimate path between our words and our heart. Our speech simply puts on display what is produced in the heart–whether good or evil.
What Did Jesus Teach about the Devil and Demons?
There is an enemy of God and humanity. That enemy needs to be known.
The advice to listen to your heart is not only common, but it has also been exalted to a sacrosanct place of moral authority in our culture.
Podcast: Is the Church Facing a Discipleship Crisis? (Ajith Fernando)
Has the church neglected one-on-one discipleship? Why should an emphasis on this kind of intensive discipleship be recaptured today?
The Collapse of the Secularization Hypothesis
It has long been assumed that the rise of modernity will be accompanied by the decline of religion, but the scholarly consensus today rejects the secularization hypothesis.
An Open Letter to the Pastor in a Post-Christian World
Though we are in post-Christian times, when the culture is becoming increasingly secularized, Christianity is far from “over.”
What is prayer and when and how should we do it? Explore answers to some common questions from To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism.
What is a creed and why is it important for the Church? Learn the basics from the answers to seven questions from To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism.
The Core Problem with Genetic Engineering
Children are not commodities to be bought and sold, or products to be manufactured, or objects to be designed for someone else’s use.
9 Ways to Guard Your Personal Relationship with God
Like all healthy and satisfying relationships, our relationship with God needs time and energy.
Podcast: Are We Undervaluing the Lord’s Supper? (Tim Chester)
Do evangelical churches undervalue communion? What's the significance of the fact that Jesus gave us the physical elements of bread and wine?
Catechesis is meant to be a robust witness to biblical faith and practice, a tool which in the hands of skilled practitioners to be used to instruct, form, and make mature disciples.
5 Myths about Studying the Bible
If we truly believe that our very spiritual lives depend on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deut 8:3; Matt 4:4), we will make the time to study God’s Word.
Know Why You Think What You Think
Norman L. Geisler, Ryan P. Snuffer
The theistic worldview begins with a belief in a personal, all-powerful, and morally perfect God. Moral ideas that flow from God’s nature are absolute.
What exactly is salvation and how does it work in the life of a believer. Get answers to the basic questions of God's saving work from How to Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism.
10 Things You Should Know about the Lord’s Supper
The Communion meal involves us in and embraces us in God’s grace. We are not mere observers. We do something. We eat something. We become participants in the story.
When Jesus walked the earth, he wasn’t afraid to touch hurting people. He drew people in close. He met them empty and left them full and turned everything upside down.
Your Kids Need You to Talk to Them
The Spirit makes godly conversations possible, and he expects you to give yourself to them because the people around you—your children—need them.
How the Sacraments Act as Contracts
The gospel is a series of promises expressed in words. God promises forgiveness, acquittal, adoption, preservation, resurrection, and glory.
Why We Sometimes Prefer to Keep God at a Distance
The Lord pursues and offers forgiveness of sins to those who want their own way, who want to have their own kingdom.
Podcast: Common Misconceptions about Heaven (Ian Smith)
Ian Smith discusses what the New Heavens and New Earth will be like when Jesus returns.
Fathers are called upon to choose not only between our children and our work, but between our convenience and the inconvenience of keeping a promise.
Why Doing Theology Right Matters—for All Christians
The case can be made that every Christian is a theologian because every Christian has a theology, whether well thought out or not.
Why Wisdom Is More than an Intellectual Pursuit
To do theology we need to do with an attitude of reverence to the God who has made himself known in his Word.
5 Questions about the Sacraments
What is a sacrament and what is its purpose in the church? Learn answers from To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism.
How Our Theology Shapes Our Prayers
Theology helps us uncover what we know about God and turn it into prayer and praise to God.
Help! I’m Struggling to Strike a Work/Life Balance
Work is not primarily a place to please our boss, help our customers, make money, or build a career. Work/life balance begins with a biblical view of work.
Podcast: The Human Need to Connect (Ed Welch)
Ed Welch discusses the human need for relationship, reflecting on the epidemic of loneliness in our world today, and offering advice for the person who feels God is distant.
The reality is that Christians are priests and that’s one of the most significant identities we share as human beings.
3 Implications of the Fact that God Has Spoken
Joel R. Beeke, Paul M. Smalley
Hearing and remembering God’s word requires a worldview that takes into account the whole counsel of God in order to guide the whole life.
The Difference Family Worship Makes
Having your family in a Christ-exalting, gospel-centered, Bible-teaching local church is crucial to Christian parenting—but it is not enough.
The Priesthood of Believers: A Lens for Viewing the World
As we live in our identity as a priest—which means that we are near to God—there are a couple of things that emerge as we look out into the world.
The highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display.
We were made for closeness to others and to God through Christ, and yet it doesn’t always feel as though we can grasp God’s nearness to us.
10 Things You Should Know about the Priesthood of Believers
Our role as priests—a role that includes both male and female—is a premier theme throughout Scripture.
Podcast: Help! I Hate My Job (Jim Hamilton)
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Help! My Faith Is Being Opposed in the Classrom
Conflict can be an opportunity to be salt and light, particularly in academic settings.
Communing with the Savior in Every Season
We can rest in the midst of difficult seasons because of the Savior who leads us and loves us, even in unexpected and hard places.
Why has there arisen this impulse in our day toward pastor-scholars and scholar-pastors? Why are so many in the younger generation reluctant to let the pastoral and scholarly roads diverge?
You Are Set Free from Self-Improvement
Many of us believe that Christian discipleship is synonymous with self-improvement. But true Christian discipleship is a call to die, not to improve.
The Bible teaches that heaven has come down to us most wonderfully and assuredly in the person of Jesus Christ, to bring us back up to heaven.
7 Essential Things to Know about Hope
Hope is not a situation. Hope is not a location. Hope is not a possession. Hope is not an experience. Hope is more than an insight or a truism.
5 Ways to Flourish in Journaling
It can be helpful to hear that there’s essentially no wrong way to go about journaling, and no real rules for it, but that it’s something you can really make your own.
We will often neglect what we don’t prioritize. And book reading is often neglected because it fails to be a priority.
Podcast: How to Read the Bible Every Day in 2020 (David Mathis)
David Mathis discusses how anyone can make Bible reading a habit in 2020, reflecting on the pros and cons of New Year's resolutions and offering practical advice on making a plan to read the Bible every day.
Be Excellent as Christ Is Excellent
It is precisely because Christians have been called to or by God’s glory and excellence that they are to add excellence to their faith.
One of the Church’s Greatest Needs
People outside the four walls of the church will eagerly embrace the faith of believers who model the honesty and integrity for which they long.
4 Prayers to Pray When You’re Afraid
When fear paralyzes you, turn to the Lord through his word and in prayer and be comforted by the light that overcomes darkness.
Scripture indicates that in heaven we will join the angels in worshiping God around his throne.
Although we cannot bequeath God to our children, we can help them know him and understand him in ways that prepare them to believe in his name.
3 Tangible Ways to Care for Widows
For the widow, a needed gift, a consumable gift, or a sentimental gift are some of the most significant gifts she can receive that often uniquely minister to her.
How to Pray for Unity across Denominations
Jesus prayed that our unity would also be a testimony such that “the world may believe you have sent me” (17:20).
An Open Letter to the Overwhelmed Parent at Christmas
For the believer, the most important thing we can do this Christmas is not wrap another present, but open up our hearts and minds anew to the wonder of God coming to earth.
When Good Gifts (Like Marriage) Distract Us from God
The problem with so many of us today is that we have close to no anxiety about spiritual realities and endless anxiety about the things of this world.
Podcast: Navigating Grief during the Holidays (Nancy Guthrie)
Nancy Guthrie discusses dealing with grief over the holidays and how God used suffering in her own life to teach her about his healing grace.
Despite the commercialization of Christmas and its overall worldly cast, God still infuses wonder into the season.
What Your To-Do List Can’t Accomplish
When your eyes are fixed on the horizon of eternity, it affects your vision for motherhood.
Help! I Want to Read the Bible, but I Find It Boring
We won’t love God’s word until he helps us to do it. And the beautiful thing is that he will.
Derek W. H. Thomas, John W. Tweeddale
For Calvin, self-denial was not a special requirement for the few but a norm for all believers, and we deny self because we have been united with God, not because we want to achieve such a union.
How to Be Content in Plenty or in Need
Women who love God and love his word find sources of joy and satisfaction that surpass any the world has to offer.
Are We Meant to Enjoy Our Work?
The stories we tell reveal our understanding of the world, with our hopes and fears, and the songs we sing are reflective of the deep longings of our hearts.
The Paradoxical Pattern of Jesus’s Life
God is unswervingly active in bringing about good from troublesome circumstances in the Christian’s life.
5 Lessons from One of the Most Famous Christmas Carols of All Time
How we live in the world should manifest the change the Spirit is working in us, carrying the impact of the joy of God “far as the curse is found.”
Journey through the Psalms: A 7-Day Devotional
Humans are relational, emotional beings—and nothing reveals this more beautifully than the book of Psalms.
How to Pray During Marital Conflict
Andreas J. Köstenberger, Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger
The potential causes for conflict in marriage are virtually limitless. We must put on the armor of God and pray for each other and for our relationships—often!
The True Way of Keeping Christmas
I entreat that your time may be thus spent. Let it not be about your dressing, your plays, your profits, or your worldly concerns but let it be the wonders of redeeming love.
How to Make Yourself at Home While Awaiting Heaven
Fixing our eyes on the home that is to come will help us thrive in this world that is not our home.
Podcast: How to Do Family Worship During the Holidays (Don Whitney)
How can you help your family not lose sight of God and the gospel during the holidays and build in a rhythm of regularly worshiping him together?
Like many larger-than-life figures in the history of the church, the memory of the French Reformer John Calvin has been subjected to various distortions that amount to urban legends.
This Day in History: C. S. Lewis Is Born
On this day in history, the most significant Christian apologist of the twentieth century was born at home in Belfast, Ireland.
Teaching Your Kids Gratitude in the Media Age
Media doesn’t create a sense of entitlement—a sense of “I deserve”—but it fuels that belief by holding in front of our eyes what others have and do.
4 Prayers to Pray in Gratitude
Turn to the Lord in gratitude with help from Scripture and these prayers of the saints.
Podcast: Complementarianism Is Not about Competency (John Piper)
John Piper discusses complementarianism, with both personal and practical implications, and how we should think about it in the #MeToo era.
How to Develop a Heart of Thanksgiving
Focusing on what I don’t have or what I can’t do is a common detriment to practicing biblical hospitality.
Our faith and all that flows from it in the Christian life is due to the Spirit, who renews us in the image of God and transforms us into Christ.
How to Pray for the Global Church
In praying for the global church, start by remembering that there is just one church of Jesus Christ.
In spite of C. S. Lewis’s fame, several myths have attached themselves to him which might give an unbalanced view of the man who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia.
10 Things You Should Know about Inaugurated Eschatology
Traditionally eschatology consists of the return of Christ, the resurrection, the final judgment, heaven, and hell. Here's what else you should know.
To Lead Others, Become a Disciple
A disciple of Jesus follows in Jesus’s steps, doing as Jesus taught and lived. But it means more than that.
5 Steps for Maximizing Time with Unbelievers
We interact with family in a host of mundane activities that seem disconnected from eternity—but they are most certainly not.
10 Things You Should Know about Demons and Satan
Jesus came into the world as the incarnate Son of God to accomplish more than one thing and defeating the devil by tasting death was among them.
How the Bible’s Irony Combats the Prosperity Gospel
Since our life is to be like Christ’s, our life must include suffering of some kind so that God’s spiritual strength can be exhibited in our physical weakness.
Will You Be Faithful Even if It Costs You?
When it looks like we’re facing defeat or failure, we’re often tempted to take things into our own hands.
Does God Ever Give Christians Over to Their Idols?
When we’re committed to something else that doesn’t have the Spirit of God, we become as spiritually inanimate as that thing to which we are committed. We need the Lord to break through.
Why You Should Read This Obscure Old Book about Pastoral Ministry
Every pastor faces that tension of cultivating a rich inner-life, focusing on the spiritual aspect of calling, without neglecting the mundane responsibilities of ministry.
How Angels and Demons Intersect with the Christian Life
What does Scripture have to say about angels and demons and what role do they play in the world today?
How to Find True Fulfillment in Marriage
The nature of the divine glory can sustain a marriage. We can marvel at its multifaceted radiance and rejoice at the very down-to-earth assistance it affords husbands and wives.
Pray your pastor would love God, and you, so much that he would be willing to disappoint you for God’s glory.
Podcast: Are Angels and Demons Still Active Today?
What does the Bible really teach about angels, demons, and Satan, and what have we implicitly adopted from culture?
10 Things You Should Know about Angels
What does the Bible have to say about angels and what have we incorrectly adopted from a worldly perspective on spiritual beings?
Hospitality Starts with Your Family
Hospitality towards others then becomes a natural outworking or extension of what we are already practicing within our own homes.
History: Stranger than Fiction
Discovering church history is like going through the wardrobe into Narnia and discovering there’s a whole world back there just waiting to be explored.
Podcast: Is Evangelicalism out of Touch with Church History? (Gavin Ortlund)
Have Protestant Evangelicals lost our connection to church history? How can we embrace our heritage and appreciate how to learn from past Christians?
How to Help Others Understand and Apply the Bible
Helping others understand the Bible and apply it to their lives is a great privilege and a great responsibility.
Infographic: How Is Your Prayer Life?
We recently asked over 14,000 people about the state of their prayers lives and gathered some stats about established habits as well as some common pain points.
What is the best way Protestants today should look back on the Reformation? Should we think of it more like a happy birth or an ugly divorce?
4 Prayers to Pray through Spiritual Darkness
Turn to the Lord in prayer and in his word during times of despair and discouragement. He is near and read to defend, protect, and preserve those he loves.
You Are Being Changed for the Good of the Church
When we join Jesus, we join his family and his mission. When Jesus Christ is Lord, he integrates disciples into a missional church family.
Podcast: What Do Protestant Evangelicals and Roman Catholics Disagree About? (Michael Reeves)
Michael Reeves discusses what the Protestant Reformation was really all about and whether or not is it still relevant today.
Guard against These 4 Dangers When Doing Historical Theology
Theological retrieval can be very beneficial, but it can also go wrong. It may also be useful to briefly articulate several potential dangers.
Herman Bavinck for the 21st Century
Cory C. Brock, James Eglinton, N. Gray Sutanto
When Bavinck lived in the early twentieth century, he believed there was “a disharmony between our thinking and feeling, between our willing and acting” and “a discord between religion and culture, between science and life.”
How and When Kids Learn Theology
Kids really learn theology when it moves from being information in their heads to truth in their lives.
The Battle of Accepting Our Limits
This gospel meditation explores the idea of being worried and confused with the Christian life, offering an invitation to turn to God when life doesn't make sense.
We Desperately Need What We Reject
There is a disharmony between our thinking and feeling, between our willing and acting. There is a discord between religion and culture, between science and life.
Podcast: Common Misconceptions about the Trinity (Fred Sanders)
Fred Sanders explains why the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to the gospel, highlights why Trinitarian analogies are of limited value, and responds to the charge that three-in-one is inherently illogical.
This gospel meditation by Paul David Tripp encourages us to turn to Christ in our hardships, taking even our most difficult moments to him.
This gospel meditation by Paul David Tripp laments the effects of sin’s curse on the world.
Christ Is a Light for the Lost
This gospel meditation by Paul David Tripp expresses a burden to share the light of Christ with those who may be unaware of his presence.
How to Find Yourself in the Psalms
I love the psalms because we find ourselves, but even more significantly, we find our Lord in the psalms.
This gospel meditation by Paul David Tripp contrasts the broken cities of this world with the restored one to come.
You Are in Constant Communication with the Lord
If you are a true believer in Jesus, you are in constant communication with your Lord in some way—either vocally or in your heart.
This gospel meditation by Paul David Tripp explores the idea of elusive rest and our ultimate hope in the life to come.
3 Goals of Pastoral Counseling
We need to rely on the gospel like this throughout our lives. Remember, Christ is both the means and the goal of counseling.
My Heart Cries Out: A 6-Day Devotional
Over the course of six days, watch videos and read Scripture and gospel meditations written by Paul David Tripp, adapted from My Heart Cries Out: Gospel Meditations for Everyday Life.
Emblems of the Infinite King: An 8-Day Reading Plan
Over the course of eight days, explore the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith with Bible passages and readings adapted from Emblems of the Infinite King by J. Ryan Lister.
Podcast: Prayer as an Invitation, Not an Obligation (John Onwuchekwa)
In this episode, John Onwuchekwa discusses how prayer can deepen our relationship with God instead of being a source of guilt.
How Professors Can Integrate Faith and Learning
Christian scholars must demonstrate a deep humility before a sovereign God before they can learn anything.
How to Pray in Times of Physical Pain
Father in heaven, in spite of all our uncertainties and all our embattled anxieties and all our discomfort, we say, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
7 Important Lessons about Masculinity
Godly leadership doesn’t give us the right to lord our authority over others; it means that it is our glory to die first.
The Right Way to Ask for Prayer
God did not create us to be self-protective, so being so will eventually lead to misery rather than safety.
Discipleship Is Never Anti-Intellectual
The journey into faithful Christian learning in a liberal arts context involves the daring venture of whole-life discipleship in response to the Great Commandment.
Podcast: C. S. Lewis on Truth, Beauty, and the Human Heart (Joe Rigney)
Joe Rigney explores the legacy of one of the most beloved Christian thinkers and writers of the 20th century.
Union with Christ When You Don’t Fit In
Jesus was excluded by all and abandoned by his friends in a time of need so that we could always be welcomed into relationship.
Help! I’m Still Single and It Feels Like Life Is Passing Me By
Life has not passed you by. It’s not going to. If you are in Christ, your life has only just begun.
What Did Jesus Teach about Evangelism?
When we look at Jesus’s life and ministry we also see that he was the greatest evangelist. In his earthly ministry he was the light of the world, the one who always lived in a way that was pleasing to his Father.
10 Things You Should Know about The Pilgrim’s Progress
The classic tale of The Pilgrim’s Progress has been popular with readers through the ages because it is rooted in the truths of the Bible.
Podcast: Can Christians Lose Their Salvation? (Dennis Johnson)
Dennis Johnson discusses Hebrews 6:4–6, one of the New Testament's most famous—and debated—warning passages.
Are Your Pleasures Worth More than Your Soul?
God is labouring to bring you back from sin and from Satan unto himself. Open the door of your hearts and the King of glory shall enter in.
Introducing the ESV New Christian’s Bible
A new edition created to help the new Bible reader orient to the foundational building blocks of the Christian life revealed in God's word.
4 Ways You Can Swim against the Cultural Tide
Want to stand out as a Christian? Foster diligence, honesty, self-control, concern for others, and integrity.
Podcast: How to Intentionally Disciple Your Kids (Lindsey Carlson)
Lindsey Carlson discusses what it looks like for parents to thoughtfully disciple teenagers during a pivotal point in their lives.
The Pros and Cons of a Global Economy
The global economy can be a little frustrating because globalization and the global economy are terms that mean different things to different people.
Why Church Planting Can’t Be Church Franchising
I have seen empires come and go, but never have I seen anything so radical and pervasive as the gospel of the kingdom.
Help! I Don’t Know What to Do with My Retirement
Retirement should not all be free unscheduled time, nor is it time to focus on ourselves, our comfort and happiness.
One of the most prominent burdens felt by society and church in the early 20th Century was the plight of orphans.
How Hudson Taylor Shocked People out of Indifference about Missions
Hudson Taylor was committed to proclaim the gospel to people who were passing into eternity without hope and without God.
When we make a home for others, we are often doing small and unseen work humanly speaking, but the meaning behind the work is never small.
Are You Frustrated by Others’ Spiritual Immaturity?
The Holy Spirit guarantees that he is at work. He will continue to be at work until it is completed on the day of Christ Jesus.
5 Ways to Ensure Our Souls Aren’t Strangled by Screens
The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omnicompetent, omni-informed, and omnipresent.
How Often Do You Examine Your Fruit?
Examine your life. Is there fruit? How would you describe your growth in godliness?
Podcast: The Unlikely Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (Dane Ortlund)
Dane Ortlund looks back on the life and theology of famed pastor-theologian, Jonathan Edwards, gleaning wisdom that we can learn from him nearly 300 years later.
Is It Right for Christians to Think the World Is Not Our Home?
There really are two kingdoms that are competing within the gospels. There is the kingdom that is ruled by Satan and there is the kingdom that is ruled by Jesus.
7 Passages to Read about God’s Protection
God is an ever-present help in trouble. Read from Scripture these truths about God's nearness to those who call upon his name.
What to Do When Life Messes with Our Plans
Carolyn Mahaney, Nicole Mahaney Whitacre
We can do the next thing because we know that God orders the seasons of our lives. Even the most difficult ones.
Jonathan Edward’s Response to Spiritual Arrogance
Jonathan Edwards was stirred by his congregation’s spiritual pride, apathy, and confused notions about true religion, alongside misunderstanding about genuine spiritual life.
The Christian Life Is about Wakefulness
The Spirit of Christ burns in our hearts, awakening us to the presence and activity of Jesus Christ. Sleeper, awake!
How the Lord’s Prayer Affected September 11, 2001
The pattern for prayer that Jesus has given to you and to me exists so that we may discover peace and contentment, hope and forgiveness, truth and assurance.
3 Misconceptions about Christian Growth
For the Christian to grow in a healthy way, we must clarify what growth is and is not.
Podcast: God’s Sovereignty, Pastoral Burnout, and Racism (John Piper)
John Piper discusses God's sovereignty, pastoral burnout, and the sin of racism.
Do We Play Any Role in Our Sanctification?
God is the one who enables us to do the good works he has called us to do.
10 Things You Should Know about People with Disabilities
When we find ourselves weak, broken, disabled, we find that God shows up in unexpected ways.
Why Study the Books of Jonah, Micah, and Nahum?
Each book of the Bible has something unique, something distinct, to teach us about God, about ourselves, and about the meaning of life.
How to Pray in the Wake of Hurricane Dorian
Natural disasters can be a doorway for spiritual questions and eternal decisions. We can do more than just watch and marvel.
When Studying the Bible, Don’t Follow Your Heart
We speak often in the church about how Christianity is a religion of the heart. It is right to speak of Christianity in this way, but not exclusively in this way.
The Economy’s 3 Essential Ingredients
Economists are looking at things that people have to make trade-off decisions about. That includes material resources, time, and relationships.
Woman: You Will Become What You Behold
If we spend our time gazing only on lesser things, we will become like them, measuring our years in terms of human glory.
Podcast: Were the First Christians Socialists? (Greg Forster)
How should believers think about the global economy and what practical difference should our beliefs make in the way that we spend and live?
Life Is a Battle; Dress Appropriately
You don’t put your armor on once the battle starts, you wear your armor so you’re ready when the battle begins.
How to Study the Bible: A 5-Day Plan with Jen Wilkin
As Christians, we believe the Bible is the very word of God, and it’s pivotal that we spend time knowing and loving him through it.
With a Christian perspective, we can see the economy as a social web that God has created for people to serve each other with their work.
A Teen’s Argument for the Bible’s Truthfulness
Christianity isn’t a religious system that collapses if you think about it too hard. The truth can stand up to the toughest questions.
Human beings—as image-bearers of the God who made the world—are responsible to take care of the world and to use their time, talent, and treasure in everything they do for the Lord.
Why Land Is More than Real Estate
After the resurrection of Jesus, God sends the Holy Spirit, who fills not just Israel, but the whole earth with his glory.
The devil is a very real, very powerful opponent, far too powerful for us to take on in our own strength.
5 Myths about the Armor of God
There are not two separate classes of Christians: Christian soldiers and Christian civilians. There are only prepared and unprepared Christian soldiers.
4 Ways to Go Deeper in the Psalms
From the psalms we see that God works in and through our emotions to draw us closer to him and to mature us spiritually.
The Christian Life Is Not Interrupted by Death
The New Testament answers the question about whether Christians at the point of death are in heaven with the comfort that they are “away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
Can Christians Know the Timing of Christ’s Second Coming? (1 Thessalonians 5)
Many wish to know when Jesus will return to establish his kingdom fully. Even the disciples asked this very question .
5 Tips for Helping Your Teens Study the Bible
Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see growth right away. It might take months and it might even take years, but keep being faithful to your calling as parents.
Is the world so broken that God will abandon it, and we will need to find a home elsewhere?
10 Things You Should Know about the New Heavens and the New Earth
God will have the final victory over what God has made. It will not be discarded but rescued.
Why the Physical Earth Matters to God
When we fail to value creation, we fail to honor the God who made and sustains it.
Podcast: The Truth about Satan and Demons (Iain Duguid)
What does the Bible really teaches us about the devil and how can we avoid overestimating or underestimating his impact on the world?
A Christian’s Perspective on Economic Downturn
Discipling people for the new economy is a major challenge. But our gospel is big enough, and our God is strong enough.
How to Pray in Spiritual Warfare
To fight the good fight, we need to be in constant contact with God, and the means by which we stay in contact is by prayer.
The Economy Is about More than Money
The economy is a system of choices we make about all of our resources. Every choice we make is an economic choice.
The Difference between Legalism and Discipline
Paul hated legalism but he enjoined discipline upon all of his followers for the purpose of godliness.
The Passionate Plea of Preaching
Alistair Begg, Sinclair B. Ferguson
There is a vast difference between simply conveying information to people, which can be cold and ineffectual, and true preaching and witness.
Is There a Difference between Pastors and Elders? (1 Timothy 3)
Besides having good character, what qualifications must one meet in order to oversee others in the church?
Podcast: What It Takes to Persevere as a Pastor (John MacArthur)
Seasoned pastor, John MacArthur, reflects on what it takes for a pastor to persevere through the challenges of a long and faithful ministry.
Men: Pursue Others Like Jesus Pursues You
All the biblical stories of the Lord moving toward people are stories of grace. Grace is God’s moving toward us in Christ.
Busting the Myth of Human Omnipotence
God’s power is at work within us. It is at work helping us to overcome sin and to grasp the extent of his love for us.
Podcast: The Heart of the Abortion Debate (Scott Klusendorf)
Scott Klusendorf discusses abortion and the current state of the pro-life movement, highlighting the biggest mistakes pro-life people make and responding to common pro-choice arguments.
Men: Don’t Neglect These 4 Key Spiritual Disciplines
Godliness requires discipline. Here are four categories to commit to growing in.
The Importance of Books in Christian History
From ancient times, books have had a profound and mysterious power to move us. We find this in every culture and in every time period.
Are Grace and Works Compatible?
If you really have experienced the grace of God and you are in fellowship with him, your heart will desire to discipline itself for the purpose of godliness.
Training Our Kids in a Culture That Affirms Transgenderism
We must tell the truth about what the Bible teaches about gender. Among other things, the Bible is clear that there is a normative connection between biological sex and gender identity.
How to Pray When You’re Feeling Apathetic about Your Faith
If we take apathy seriously, as does God, we will be better equipped to recognize it when it threatens, avoid it, or at least escape from it earlier.
If we have stripped ourselves bare of all besetting sins and every hindrance, and have begun to run with perseverance our race, we are then given the focus that guarantees our finishing well.
4 Guiding Principles for Cultivating Friendship
It may be true that you are too busy for friends. But that doesn’t mean you should be. We always make time for what we treasure.
Podcast: What We Often Get Wrong about Our Emotions (J. Alasdair Groves)
In this episode, Alasdair Groves discusses what the Bible teaches about our emotions and how Christians should think about and deal with the full range of them.
Help! I’m Feeling Spiritually Listless
What do we do when we feel spiritually listless? First of all, don’t be surprised.
5 Tips for Being Disciplined without Being Legalistic
God is not counting our failures against us, and we are not building a treasury of merit with our successes. We are simply trying to live a disciplined life that pleases our loving Father.
An Open Letter to the Child Facing End-of-Life Decisions for a Parent
How can you make rational medical decisions while flailing in grief? Even if you know your parent’s wishes, the burdens can feel too heavy.
Why Godly Discipline Is about Learning to Fail Better
We're sinners and are not striving for perfection, but aiming to please God.
J. I. Packer’s Thoughts on Holiness
Repentance begins with a recognition of the multitude of ways in which our thinking and attitude and belief system are contrary to what is revealed in Scripture.
Podcast: Why Church History Matters (Justin Taylor)
Justin Taylor reflects on the immense importance of church history, highlighting why it’s important to make time for it alongside our study of the Bible.
Pregnancy and the Gospel: A 5-Day Devotional
In this devotional, Gloria Furman brings Scriptural light on the topics of pregnancy, child-birth, and motherhood.
When you’re talking about discipline for the purpose of godliness, it’s with an eye on the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who enables godliness.
5 Myths about End-of-Life Care
Few things halt conversation as quickly as the topic of death, yet the stewardship of our God-given lives matters until the very end.
Who Is the Man of Lawlessness? (2 Thessalonians 2)
The man of lawlessness seeks to make himself the central person of worship, beyond any other religious objects or personages in his day.
Podcast: The Rewarding Risks of Church Membership (Thabiti Anyabwile)
Thabiti Anyabwile reflects on the value and benefits of local church membership, showing what the Bible really teaches about the idea of formal membership.
The Danger of Neglecting Lament in the Local Church
Lament is a rich but untapped reservoir of God’s grace, and there is a danger in neglecting lament in the church.
Help! I’m Feeling Stressed about Finances
As members of our families, God calls us to love and serve one another, and, as members of the Household of God, to practice stewardship over the gifts God has given us.
4 Prayers to Pray for the Lost
We can call on the Lord on behalf of those who don't know him—for he knows and cares for them.
Learning Money Management from Jesus
We need to teach much more clearly and with far greater boldness the biblical message that we will have to give an account to God, and that the choices we make today have eternal consequences.
The Journey of Following Jesus Isn’t Always Smooth
Dying and rising is the pattern not only of Jesus’s life, but of our lives—of our everyday moments.
The Sabbath: A 5-Day Devotional
What does it mean to take a Sabbath? Does this Old Testament law even practically apply today?
We come into this world as a danger to ourselves. We are naturally more discontented than contented.
10 Things You Should Know about Communion with Christ
Before we can have communion (or fellowship) with Christ, we must first be in a right relationship with him. That relationship can only come from our being in union with Christ.
Norman Geisler (1932–2019) on the Truth about Truth
Norman L. Geisler, Frank Turek
Norman Geisler (1932–2019) distinguishes here between contrary beliefs and the absoluteness of truth.
Don’t Try to Make the Bible Say More (or Less) than It Does
To the degree that sin remains within us, we all seek to find in the Bible what we want it to say rather than what it actually does say.
Podcast: How to Date Your Wife (Justin Buzzard)
Justin Buzzard offers advice for husbands eager to love and serve their wives on a daily basis.
Paul Miller’s Story of Learning to Love
Paul Miller shares his story of learning to love by discovering the pattern of Jesus’s life.
10 Things You Should Know about the J-Curve
Like the letter “J,” Jesus’s life descends through his incarnation and then death, and then upward into his resurrection and exaltation.
When human beings are delivered through pregnancy and birth pain, there is more going on than biological processes and physiological mechanics.
Over the next 15 days, read through John’s first letter to the church alongside explanatory passages adapted from ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation (Volume 12).
Podcast: A Trauma Surgeon’s Guide to Modern Medicine and the End of Life (Kathryn Butler, MD)
Kathryn Butler, MD shares from her experiences working as a trauma surgeon in an ICU and offers biblical wisdom for walking alongside loved ones at the end of life.
Help! I Don’t Know How to Bring My Faith to Work
Like all working people, Christians must deal with deadlines, difficult people, and office politics. How should a Christian approach life at work?
A Movie So Good It Will Ruin You—Would You Watch It?
Do we have the ability to keep ourselves from entertainment unto death?
4 Ways to Read the Bible for Personal Application
Your whole Bible “applies personally.” This Lord is your God; this history is your history; these people are your people; this Savior has brought you in to participate in who he is and what he does.
Is leisure something we really need? As Christians, we perhaps struggle with the concept, but it is vitally important.
Podcast: Verses That Changed My Life (John Piper)
John Piper reflects on key verses that have had a huge impact on his life and helped him grasp the connection between our joy and God’s glory.
The Promises of God: A 7-Day Devotional
We are to treat a promise of God as reality, as someone treats a check. We are to take the promise and endorse it with our own name by personally receiving it as true.
You Were Designed for Spirituality
Justin L. McLendon, Christopher W. Morgan
Humans are created good and blessed beyond measure, being made in God’s image, with an unhindered relationship with God, and with freedom.
3 Barriers to Spiritual Growth Faced by Teens Today
Christian teenagers attempting to grow in godliness tend to face a series of unique challenges.
Why Your Parents' Limitations Aren’t Limiting
Limits force you to come to grips with both your humanity and your sin nature by showing you that you are not God, but you sure want to be.
David Powlison’s Answer to the Question “Why Me?”
David Powlison (1949–2019) reminds us that God does not offer advice and perspective from afar; he steps into our suffering.
How Charles Spurgeon Learned to Preach through a Broken Heart
When the heart is overwhelmed, it’s one thing to survive adversity; it is something entirely different to continue preaching Sunday after Sunday, month after month.
When ‘I Don’t Know’ Is a Good Answer and When It’s Not
It’s vital that everyday Christians are speaking into nuanced cultural issues from a biblical perspective.
Think about it: a woman’s sphere of influence today is far more diverse and extensive than ever before.
Are Pastors Free to Accumulate Wealth?
Few people acknowledge the narratives that drive the assumptions that provide our framework for how we relate to money.
4 Prayers to Pray when You’re Repentant
Turn to God and his Word and the prayers of the saints when your heart cries out to the Lord in repentance.
The true woman does not compartmentalize domesticity, nor does she reduce it to a set of behaviors.
Podcast: The False Messages Facing Women Today (Lydia Brownback)
What messages are Christian women hearing and imbibing from culture, and what does the Bible have to say?
What Parents Can Learn from Children’s Books
In many respects, and certainly in spiritual matters, we are all weak and inadequate, and we need to face it.
4 Prayers to Pray When You’re Anxious
Read four prayers from church history along with passages from Scripture, and be encouraged to know the Lord hears you.
4 Prayers to Pray when You’re Sorrowed
Turn to the Word of God and the prayers of the saints when your heart is saddened and in need of the gospel’s hope.