Fulfill God’s Agenda, Not Your’s

As a pastor, I see many Christians wandering around in a spiritual fog, wondering, “Why am I here? What does God want me to do with my life?” I don’t want to diminish the importance of your discovering God’s will for your life, but many of your questions about God’s plan can be answered by grasping this simple truth: you have been created by God, selected by God, and empowered by ...

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10 Essential Attitudes for A Good Quality of Life

The key to a long and productive life is found in 10 essential attitudes: Keep Learning. When we cease to learn, we stop growing, because a lazy brain is an aging brain. So much has changed over the course of the years. As technology advances, we must continually learn skills our parents and grandparents never had to know. But the most important pursuits in life are learning the Word of ...

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From John’s Desk

Dear Friend, I’m sure you’ve been struck recently by how very sinful the times are in which we live. Sin and the war it wages on mankind is everywhere. You can’t visit your favorite online news source, turn on the television, or tune into your local radio station without being reminded, one way or another, of the wickedness of our day. It’s part of the atmosphere we breathe, filling every open ...

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What to Do If You’re Bored with God

I think that is a particular malady of old men…especially old men like me with ADD. Boredom has in it a touch of cynicism and a dash of not caring. I guess all of us have some of that, but the problem with boredom is that it spills over into things like one’s walk with Christ. And if you’re a preacher, that’s when it gets dicey. Not only that, when ...

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The Three Legs of a Healthy Marriage

Martin Luther said that God established three essential institutions: marriage, the ministry of the Word, and the state. Luther went on to say that "both in chronological order and in significance, the home precedes both the ministry of the Word of God and the state." And yet, many people today try to demote marriage to a human invention. But the Scripture tells us that marriage was created by God.

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The College of Contentment

These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. Weeds grow easily. Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We do not need to sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to earth. And so we do not need to teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education.

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A Life of Missing Out

But coming to know God’s saving love is only part of the story. I have discovered through decades of ministry that many Christians don’t know the depth of God’s love. They have met the God who is love; they know the fact of God’s love. But they live their lives in the shallow end of the pool. They think that once God’s love has been experienced through the forgiveness of ...

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