Understanding Iran therefore requires more than studying military capabilities or diplomatic strategy. It requires taking theology seriously. Christians understand this because the gospel shapes lives, cultures, and civilizations. Our calling is not merely to analyze those competing stories but, more importantly, to proclaim the true King whose kingdom comes not through revolution or coercion, but through His death and resurrection.
For those Christians who feel the tug to read great literature, know that it is not a waste of your time. These books will only deepen your appreciation for the Scriptures and will open your eyes to a fuller, more profound vision of reality and the God who loves you.
We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.

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By the end of this prayer of wrestling, David finally has the strength to claim victory over his lying enemies.
This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
Longstanding tradition must be bolstered by something outside of ourselves that also lies outside of the traditions of men.
The Lord has an answer to your tears, your trouble, your weariness, your enemies, your grief, your shame, your sin.
No matter how many times we hear this good news, it never stops being good news.
Our faith is precisely where Paul puts it, namely, in the blood of Christ.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
Press on, church. Yours is the victory through Jesus Christ your Lord.
God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 12 of Hitchhiking with the Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).