This is All Saints Day, one of the finest, most joyful days of the Christian year. It’s the day when we remember and give thanks for all true believers around the world, especially those who have gone before us into heaven. Evangelicals often pay little attention to the Christian year (for various reasons), but this is one holiday that should…
On October 31, 1517 an obscure monk named Martin Luther, desiring to spark theological discussion over the medieval practice of selling indulgences, nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The spark he set off ignited a flame that spread across Europe and launched the Protestant Reformation. By challenging the …
Today we’re back on the road again. This time we are traveling to New Jersey for a couples conference at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference on the Jersey Shore. Here is a good shot of the conference center and the surrounding area. We fly to Philadelphia where our friends Paul and Kim Barreca will pick us up and drive us to the conference center…
You know it must be a momentous occasion when James Dobson and the New York Times agree on anything. On moral and political issues, they disagree almost completely, but on one major point they are united. This is a turning point election in American history. In its endorsement of Barack Obama, the New York Times says that “this year the natio…
We’re in the middle of planning for our first-ever Keep Believing Open House in the Chicago area. On Saturday, November 15, we’re inviting all our Chicago-area friends to come to the Open House at Concordia University in River Forest, a suburb on the west side of Chicago. The evening starts at 7 PM and will include a ministry update and…
Here are two questions that arrived via email:1.) “Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers” (1 Timothy 5:1 NKJV). I wanted to get your understanding of this verse. How would a younger man deal with confronting an older man who is in sin? How does Matthew 18 apply in this case? If an older man is i…
Yesterday while working on a new sermon, I ran across two articles about the great flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6-8). The first one is called The Genesis Flood: An Interpretive Key to the Past. This concluding paragraph gives you a flavor for the whole article, which I highly recommend:Noah’s Flood must be given its proper place in the …
Yesterday I received a message via Facebook (yes, I’m on Facebook, and if you are, come by and say hello) from a friend who is preparing a talk for an upcoming retreat. She said she wanted to focus on the importance of spiritual balance. She said she had been thinking about some opposites—or maybe some are what you would call complement…
We have just posted a new sermon called What Does It Mean to be Filled with the Spirit? Last week I sent this sermon out via email to over 5000 people. Since then, I’ve revised the sermon a bit and added two new sections—one on the role emotions should play in the filling of the Holy Spirit and one on the fact that “Be fille…
Here are excerpts from two recent articles about the growth of the Christian movement in China: Christianity FeverAs the Chinese search for a new social philosophy in this new century, China’s resurrected church brings hope for the future. Public opinion about Christianity has turned from negative to positive. Believers report, “Many pe…