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Thomas à Kempis, in his book The Imitation of Christ, said, “Choose one thing to learn from Christ each year, and soon you will be like Him.”  So, what is the next step for you?  What’s your next 'one thing’ that God is calling you to focus on this year to become more like Christ?  If you do this, then in a few years you will “soon be like Him”!

Let’s reset our view on this together: there is a big difference between a bribe and a reward...

YOU are all strategically positioned – by the Lord Jesus – in homes, in schools, in businesses – for Kingdom impact in a way that pastors and missionaries like me long for!  We wish we could have the impact in people’s homes, schools, and businesses that you all have!

Callings from God are not ranked.  Some are not better or more impressive or more important than others.  What is most important is humble obedience.  Faithfully serving God right where you are is the very highest calling. 

Jesus wants to meet you in your place of pain, your place of failure, of disappointment.  He wants to meet you there so that He can deal with it and heal you there.

Today's episode is in response to a listener's question: What do you do if you've prayed about something for a long time and just can't sense any clear answer or direction from the Lord?

Today I'll share with you a statement that was sent to me from a moral relativist – this is a person who opposes the idea moral absolutes – and the response I sent back.

Following the prayer model provided by Jesus in Matthew 6:10, I decided to let that sentence be a template for my prayers, replacing the words “on earth” with other personalized places and locations that I wanted to specifically ask for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done:

Given my life circumstances, it is likely that I will die someday as a result of consumption or entertainment... This prospect is beginning to eclipse my fear of persecution and martyrdom.

Today I want to address four common questions to help you in leading your family’s daily devotional times.  The goal is not perfection, but progress – and practice makes progress.  

When our kids were 9, 8, and 5, Dianna and I decided to make our family vacation into a family spiritual retreat by adding a special devotional experience into each day. Here's what we did:

In today’s episode, I will provide a sample one-week plan that you can use to guide your family’s daily devotional time on vacation.  Each day will include simple instructions for training your kids how to spend meaningful time alone with God, followed by age-appropriate questions for debriefing your experiences together afterwards.

With just a little extra planning and intentionality, you can also make your family vacation into a family spiritual retreat.  

There are as many different routines for one’s devotional life as there are followers of Jesus!  My hope here is to provide one example that might help spark you to develop your own personalized routine.

If you don’t have any idea where you are on this journey of redemption & salvation – and you just kind-of checking Jesus out – and you are just exploring to see if this faith-in-Jesus thing is for you – that’s okay!  That’s great, actually – just keep on exploring.  Jesus Himself invites you to!

Today, let’s look at the alternative to sanctification: what if we are “only justified”?  What of those who “get saved,” but then don’t really do anything else?  Aren’t they still saved? 

The life of walking with Jesus, learning from Him, listening to Him, practicing obedience, learning to live by the power of His Spirit – it’s a lifelong process known as sanctification. It's hard work, but so worth it!

So here we are, in this in-between time. For those of us who have trusted in the saving work of Jesus on our behalf, we live between new birth – and earthly death. And some days, it is so hard.  And other days, it is more amazing than we ever dreamed possible! What’s going on? Why does it feel like this? What's happening in the Christian's life between salvation and heaven?

Salvation is so much more than just forgiveness from sin and the hope of heaven.  Salvation through Jesus certainly includes those wonderful things – but it also includes so much more!

Do you want so badly to be wholly devoted to Jesus?  And yet, you constantly feel like you are at war with temptation and sinful desires?  I know I do.  What can we do about it?  How can we close the gap between who we are and who we want to be?