Friendship is far more important to God than we often realize. We tend to think he puts top priority on performance, purity, and perfection, and we assume relationship is the eventual reward for those things. In other words, the more like Jesus we become, the closer our relationship with him […]

Love is a way of being as a person, a way of thinking, acting, and living. It is, in fact, being Christ-like or (given the first-person singular in 11:1) even being like Paul, who has shown us what this looks like in his own life in chapter 9 and so […]

When we approach the Bible, our first question is usually, What does it say? Now that’s a good question. But we need to ask another question first: What is the Bible? This is a big question, so we’ll break it into three separate questions: Who wrote the Bible? How does […]

One of the greatest lessons I personally learned as I wrote a book about the process of rebuilding based on Nehemiah was the need to celebrate. Nehemiah celebrated when the task was finished, but he also celebrated as they were building the wall of Jerusalem.  Many rebuild the “wall” only […]

Pastoring a church isn’t a 9 to 5 thing; it’s a lifestyle job—24/7! There will always be more to do than we can ever get done, and more people we ought to spend time with than we possibly can. Raising Passionate Jesus Followers In the throes of it all, unfortunately, […]