Gospel of John 6:16-24 Jesus Walks on Water

This morning as I was reading about Jesus walking on the water it hit me how unusual this was. Normally people walking on water would be an unusual experience. But after having read and heard this story at least 100 times somehow it loses its sense of wonder. After all, this is the same guy [...]

Gospel of John 2:1-4:54 – The Theme of Old and New

D.A. Carson believes Cana provides the bookends for a section running from 2:1-4:54 (Carson, The Gospel according to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary) , 166 . In that section, he believes the theme of old/new is being highlighted over and over again. As different as we see the Gospel of John from the synoptics this [...]

Comparing Our Worst to Their Best

I don’t know about you but I have a tendency to compare the worst moments of my faith to the best moments of those in scripture and wonder why I can’t be more like them or wonder why my faith is so weak. Wouldn’t it be just as easy to pick out their worst moments, [...]

Misconceptions About Our Contribution to our own Salvation

There are a lot of misconceptions floating around out there about our salvation and what is expected of us in the process. Two misconceptions fall on the extremes of the pendulum of what is required of us to be saved. On one side, you have the misconception that because salvation is a “free gift” that [...]

Baptism – Related to Salvation but Not a Work

Two insights from Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament that help us get a better understanding of baptism:
1) Baptism is seen in the New Testament as part of God’s reconciling process. Here are some words from Oepke in Kittel,
“Christian baptism certainly has as its final goal new and eternal life…the new life stands in [...]

Dealing With God When the Answer is “No”

Usually if we ask God for something we generally think it must be the best thing for us. How often do you hear prayers that God would make us murderers or drug dealers? You don’t because that is a crazy prayer to pray. We would expect a no to those prayers! But what do you [...]

Tim Tebow Talks About Finishing Strong – This is a Great Read

Shortly after posting the previous silly video about Tim Tebow I got this email in my inbox from my friend Donny who was at this dinner. He passed this message on through email today and I asked him if it was okay to share. This is a great story…
Finishing Strong! Submitted by Amanda D:
A true [...]

Balancing Faith, Grace, Baptism, and Works

I am re-posting this comment I left over at Jay Guin’s blog. He was discussing the necessity of baptism and I thought this might be helpful to mention here as well. See his post here as it is excellent and followed up by insightful comments. Here is my comment:
We have to understand what Paul meant [...]

Jesus – Powerful

I grew up in church hearing about Jesus. When you are a kid the things that stand out to you are the miracle stories. It is a lot easier for a Bible School teacher to hold a kid’s attention teaching about freeing a man of a legion of demons and scattering them into a herd [...]

What Does God Use to Grow Our Faith?

Our 20s/30s class has been watching Andy Stanley’s 5 Things God Uses to Grow Your Faith DVD (You can actually watch the messages at that link). He has observed over time and through talking with many people that there are 5 common factors that God predominantly uses to grow our faith. Here is his list:

Practical [...]