Knock, knock, knock. Someone was at the door. Probably a salesman. No one else would ever find their way to our house. I was in my first year of ministry. Kerra and I lived in the church parsonage, which was on a lonely road seven miles from the nearest gas station. The church I served didn't have an office, so I established my workplace in one of the bedrooms. Knock, kno...

Each Sunday, we normally recite a question and answer from the New City Catechism. Sometimes we recite a creed together, like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed? Why do we do that? All Christians want to think that their beliefs are of biblically sound doctrine. However, a recent study from LifeWay Research suggests that evangelicals believe several heretical claim...

Effective evangelism begins with persevering prayer. So, if we are going to reach out to people, we must first reach up to God. In this session, we will consider why prayer is so vital. Our text this week is from Ephesians 6:10-20. It's a familiar passagethe armor of God. Paul goes through a thorough list of the equipment we need to engage in spiritual warfare. At the end...

This Sunday, we'll be talking about God's gospel plan. I might use the word "story" instead of "plan." It's essentially the same thing. A plan is just a story, written in future tense. Stories are important. Without stories, facts and figures are just isolated points of data with no significance. Stories are what give shape and meaning to our lives. Even the Bible is ...

Who are we reaching? That's the question we're considering this week in our series, Gospel Shaped Outreach. What kind of impact are we having on our community? Regrettably, I would have to say that we aren't reaching many, if any at all. That's a problem. I consider myself to be most at fault in this problem. While I repeatedly preach the gospel from the pulpit, I am no...

There is a fascinating story in 2 Kings 7 which takes place during the long and impressive ministry of the prophet Elisha, the successor to Elijah. Here's the setting: The city of Samaria, the capitol city of Israel, is suffering through a severe famine. The famine has come as a result of the Syrian army laying siege to the city. No one could come into the city, and no one...

It seems there is no escaping the pressure. In the broader culture, we are under pressure to keep our faith in Jesus to ourselves. And in the evangelical culture, we feel the pressure to share our faith with the whole world. One way or another, if you are a believer in Christ, you are bound to feel some pressure. Or are you? This week we will engage in the second sessio...

It's a good questionthe kind of question we should be asking. But before responding to this question, I have another question for you: What image comes to mind when you hear the word church?" Most people are likely to think of "church" as an institution. The dictionary defines asocial institution as a group of people who have come together for a common purpose. An inst...

Over the past several weeks we have focused on some of the attributes of Godthe omniscience of God, the omnipresence of God, the omnipotence of God, the goodness of God, the immutability (unchanging nature) of God, to name a few. We could easily spend the rest of the year considering the attributes of God. But even if we were to consider a different attribute of God each w...

A few weeks ago I preached on the incomprehensibility of God. The key concept there is that God is infinite, so we cannot understand Him fully (even though we can know Him truly). This Sunday I plan to preach on the holiness of God, and as I began preparing for that I came across the following quote from A. W. Tozer, under the heading "We Cannot Understand Holiness." I su...