The last couple blog posts (part 1 and part 2) sought to answer the question “Does our justification lead to inaction?” Our hope is that these posts would spur all of us on to proactively pursue good works. We are speculating that another lie that Satan tells us to “slow us down” from pursuing good works is that… 3) Me Preaching the Gospel to Myself will Save other People “I must be doing well spiritually.  I am in an community group where I am vulnerable with others and freely confess my sin, I attend the gospel-centered Christian conferences, I am…

In our last post, we sought to encourage our own souls and those of our readers that the reality that we are justified in God’s eyes should in no way slow us down from seeking to zealously pursue good works.  We are speculating that Satan is lying to the church telling us that the doctrine of justification should slow us down in our attempt to please God with our lives.  The second lie that we’ve been tempted to believe is… 2) God always “Feels” the Same Way Towards Us I am sure I am not the only one who has…

Thankfully, very few Christians today would say that the doctrine of justification[1]gives us permission to sin.  This lie definitely has been used by the Devil to derail many believers, but I am not so sure that this is his lie of choice in evangelical churches today.  Instead, I am concerned that we emphasize so much that Christians are not saved by good works that we are suspicious of “good works” altogether.  A common refrain in American churches is that we need to “preach the Gospel to ourselves every day.”  When inquiring among our brothers and sisters about a career choice, we…

Someone at church told Stacey the other day that we should abandon the saying “Well, it’s not rocket science,” and replace it with, “Well, it’s not parenting.” That is because while I am sure that rocket science is really hard, I am all the more sure that parenting is way harder.  Anyone agree? When we parent we are dealing with real people who have real souls. And there is no one that can influence our children like we can. And it is often so hard to know how to respond to every circumstance that we encounter with our kids. But…

My friend Kameron posted a quote from G.K. Chesterton the other day that I thought was very insightful: “The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.” I was reflecting on this quote as I spent Thanksgiving with my family. It seems that within the American culture we do have a deep understanding of how blessed we are. We have, after all, set aside a day for the specific purpose of thanksgiving. But as our culture becomes more and more secular we begin to lose an understanding of…

One of our Greek professors said that Greek should be like your underwear: it is important, you should have it, it should support you, but no one needs to see it. When I write posts on here I try to follow that principle, but today I must address Greek head-on. I have heard a lot of people recently challenge the common translation of the Great Commission with an appeal to the Greek participle used. So here is the Great Commission as you know and love it: And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth…

If you check out the Bible translation statistics on Wycliffe’s page, you will find that of the world’s 6,800+ languages only 513 have a copy of the entire Bible (that is around 6.6% for those keeping score). However, you may also notice that 1,276 languages have access to the New Testament. This means that we have 763 languages that have the New Testament, but not the Old. And as I have talked to translators, there are many translation projects that stop with the New Testament. If I understand correctly, one of the reasons for these statistics is that translators at…

As we think about moving to Africa, one of the many things we have to consider is money. Turns out, Americans view money very differently overall than Africans. Consider the following story from the book African Friends and Money Matters: “Three single men were renting an apartment together, sharing the cost of utilities. One of the three, Mr. Ekwa, was designated to collect the agreed upon amounts from the others each month and to pay the electric bill. Just before the due date on one occasion, Mr. Ekwa had a personal bill that had to be paid before the due…

It has been a rough week with our kids. We seek to be diligent parents: teaching them the Word, disciplining them when they sin, calling them to repentance and faith, memorizing Scripture as a family, and lots of hugging and playing. And yet, their response is often sin: whining instead of being thankful, lying instead of being truthful, stealing instead of being generous. And to top it off, potty training has not being going all that well so in the midst of dealing with all of that I often find myself on my hands and knees scrubbing urine out of…

According to an article I read today about Nigeria, recently:”…an Islamic militant group, invaded the off-campus hostel of Federal Polytechnic College on October 1 and murdered up to 30 students. The attack took place in the city of Mubi in remote Adamawa State, located in north-eastern Nigeria. Gunmen reportedly rounded up the students and demanded to know their names. If they gave a Christian name, they were given a chance to deny their Christian faith and convert to Islam by reciting the shahada (Muslim prayer of faith). If they refused and stood firm in their Christian faith, they were either…