Remember that time you forgot to set the right date on your post before you finished working on it so that it published and went live instead of merely being scheduled? I sure do. Ignore that last email update. It’ll come back around on Monday like usual. Now you just have a sneak peak of coming attractions!
My family is taking a much-needed rest over the next few days. Posts will be only here and there until we get back. I can’t wait to hit the ground running with you when we do. There’s much to talk about together. As always, thanks for reading and sharing. None of this happens without you. Blessings!
In this fourth part of our series, Simplicity: Finding Contentment in a Busy Life, we get practical. What does it actually look like to live with the simplicity and contentment found only in Christ in some specific situations that everyone faces? We start this week with a situation that is powerful tempting for just about everyone to seek their contentment somewhere other than Jesus. Keep reading to find out where.
Use It Well
By a show of hands, how many of you have heard of Benny Hinn? The televangelist is a longtime peddler of the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel is a uniquely American heresy (that we have unfortunately exported around the world) which holds that God rewards faithfulness with material blessings, that worldly success is an obvious sign of God’s favor. It holds that the contrary is true as well: Poor health and financial loss and the like are signs of faithlessness on our part. If we aren’t seeing the life outcomes we want to see, it is because we don’t believe strongly enough. Hinn’s specialty is healing. His services are filled with him waving a hand in someone’s direction and that person falling over backwards as she is “slain by the Spirit.” In practice it’s pretty wild stuff.
Read the rest…
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
(CSB – Read the chapter)
I’ve said many times before that context is king when it comes to understanding the Scriptures. I’ll continue to beat that drum until I have you dancing to it in your sleep. But there aren’t many verses for which such a reminder is so important as this one. Taken out of context, this verse threatens to unravel our whole understanding of salvation and seems to justify the stifling legalism that has given Christianity such a bad name in so many places. How do we get this right?
Read the rest…
“So she went running to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him!’” (CSB – Read the chapter)
John wrote his account of Jesus’ life and ministry about 30 years after the other three gospels had already been recorded. In that time, the original three had no doubt been copied and shared numerous times. Their stories and presentations of the teachings of Jesus (along with the other New Testament letters) were likely already shaping the young church. The first three, though, were not without their problems. John had the opportunity, knowing that all the other eye-witnesses to the resurrection were probably dead, to “set the record straight.” So, what did he do?
Read the rest…
The Nexus 