Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

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No wonder that when young people grow up in a law-saturated, grace-dry church, they leave the faith by droves for all they’ve heard their whole life is a life they can never live up to.
Bloody, bruised, and burnt out—our friends, family members, and coworkers are walking out of churches, giving up on God’s family, and at the same time giving up on the message that the Church has been entrusted with.
She had obviously heard about Jesus previously, maybe even from off-handed comments or even rumors. Her daughter was sick so she sought the gossiped-about Jesus as he was leaving for Tyre and Sidon.
What James really desired was to be beside his Lord Jesus. He wanted to sit not twelve seats away, not six, but smack-dab beside him.
His reaction was totally wrong. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. When I’d finished confessing, he didn’t start yelling. Out of his mouth came words like forgiveness, grace, Christ, clean slate. He was saying all the wrong things.
Today is Friday the 13th of February and that means tomorrow we celebrate Valentine’s Day. Two days back-to-back that most people recognize as being very different.
Your primary purpose in life is having something done to you. God created you in order that He might have someone to give to, to bless, to love, to nurture, to save, to give Himself to.
Have you ever found yourself looking back on a time in your life when you were thoroughly enmeshed in something wrong, and now you hardly recognize the person you were then?
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.
Paul is on a roll. He's adding up all the things that can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And the total? Nothing, zilch, zero.
Seeing, we do not see. Our eyes are busy deceiving us 24/7, like two liars sunk into our faces, calling black white and white black. To see God's work in our world, our eyes must retire and our ears labor overtime.
I was angry at heaven, at earth, and everything in between, for my life and my love and my hopes had all gone wrong, terribly, irreversibly, wrong.