On Sunday, four people walked out of church with a cross stamped on the back of their hand. If you ate lunch with one of them, you probably asked about it. That was the point.Paul wrote 1 Thessalonian...  Read More

Last Sunday we prayed out loud, "Here I am." This Sunday we find out what that looks like, and the answer is in a letter to a church that was only months old. Take some time this week to read 1 Thessa...  Read More

On Sunday we watched Jesus look at a crowd that was harassed and helpless, "like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). It moved Him. Then He turned to the men standing next to Him and said, "The h...  Read More

This Sunday we're asking an uncomfortable question: is anybody actually doing the one job Jesus gave His church? But Jesus doesn't start with a guilt trip. He starts by looking at a crowd. Before you ...  Read More

Peter opens with a job description, and before he says a word about the work, he tells us whose flock it is. "Shepherd the flock of God that is among you." The elders don't own it. The pastor doesn't ...  Read More

Sunday's message ended with an assignment, and assignments have a way of evaporating by Tuesday. So here it is again.Hebrews 10:24 says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and goo...  Read More

Sunday we're in Hebrews 10:19-25, a letter written to a people who were coming apart.Spend a few minutes in the text before you get here.Critically ThinkRead Hebrews 10:19-25. Verse 19 opens with "The...  Read More

Eleven men climbed a mountain in Galilee because Jesus told them to be there. They saw Him. They fell down and worshiped. And then Matthew writes the sentence he could have left out: "but some doubted...  Read More

Preparing for Sunday - Matthew 28:16-20This Sunday we start a ten-week series called The Church He Builds, and we're beginning at the very end of Matthew's Gospel. Eleven men stood on a hillside in Ga...  Read More

This Sunday we finish 1 Samuel. Twenty-two weeks ago we opened this book with a woman praying so hard at Shiloh that the old priest took her for a drunk, and it closes on a hill called Gilboa with the...  Read More

Saul stood on a ridge at Gilboa looking down at more Philistines than he had ever seen, and he did the thing you would want him to do. He asked God. Dreams, Urim, prophets, three ways God had spoken t...  Read More

This Sunday the text sets two men side by side in the same week, on the eve of the same battle, asking the same God the same kind of question. One of them gets a wall and one of them gets a promise, a...  Read More