Christianity does not locate freedom in radical autonomy. It does not tell either men or women that happiness consists in escaping obligations arising from relationships we did not entirely choose.
Jesus never promised me a World Series championship. He never promised that my children would always succeed or that life would go according to plan. He promised something better.
In Jesus, God acted first, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:5).

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Everything in the text sets up the polarity of earth and heaven, mortification and glorification, humiliation and exaltation. We preach the cross, because it is the only way to glory. Just look at Jesus, who set His face toward Jerusalem, endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now seated at the right hand of power, with all things under His feet.
I don’t think the people of Jerusalem designed to reject God. They didn’t wake up one day and decide that, instead of listening to God, they would make it their mission to kill him. They were deceived. Blinded. Deluded by sin and its author. As a result, they were unable and unwilling to hear the Word of the Lord.
“There is no obedience that does not have its eyes on either God or neighbor. An obedience that is motivated by what we will get out of it is no obedience at all.”
Netflix just recently released a series called The Umbrella Academy, another comic book series adapted for screen.
I was once asked why I thought young people were leaving the church in droves after they graduated high school.
Our church doesn’t talk a lot about giving up things for Lent. Lent seasons means we have Sunday night services as well, where we bring in speakers who talk about a different theme each year.
Americans love the vicarious sense of pride they get from the odds-defying underdog myth.
The word of faith means the word that declares us righteous and gives us Christ’s own righteousness as a gift. At the start of the Passion Season, these texts call us deny ourselves and our pride that comes by our obedience to the Law, and to cast all of our sins, failures, and weaknesses onto Christ, to trust Him alone for our salvation.
There are two ways to think about what’s happening when someone is tempted. The first is to imagine temptation as enticement toward something bad and wrong. This is probably the more common of the two. But there’s another way of thinking about it. Temptation could also be seen as encouragement away from something good and right.
If you are going to memorize a passage of Scripture, can I suggest these two verses?
As one substance, Christ is God become man, the fullness of God who was pleased to dwell in Jesus Christ.
The danger was not necessarily inside the city. Nor was it from an obvious source. Outside the walls of Thyatira, lay a small shrine of white stone.