God's Love for us

The Conviction of the Holy Spirit Have you ever been in the middle of doing something, saying something, watching something, pursuing something, and felt a deep, quiet, internal sense that this is not right? Not a loud voice from heaven. Not a dramatic supernatural experience. Just a persistent, uncomfortable, deeply personal sense that you are heading in the wrong direction or that you have already gone somewhere you should not have gone? That experience, that gentle but unmistakable internal discomfort, is something that every Christian knows and that the Bible gives a specific name to. It is the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Conviction is one of the most precious and most misunderstood works of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. It is misunderstood because it is easily confused with condemnation, the crushing, hopeless weight of guilt that comes not from God but from the enemy. And it is precious because it is the primary means by which the Holy Spirit keeps believers on ...

Being Obedient to God's Calling There is a moment that many believers recognize, a moment when God speaks clearly about what He wants, when the direction He is pointing is unmistakable, when the calling He has placed on your life becomes undeniable. And then there is the moment that follows, the moment of decision about whether to actually do what you have heard. It is in that gap between hearing and doing that the entire quality of a person's obedience is determined. Obedience to God's calling is one of the most central and most consistently emphasized themes in all of Scripture. From Abraham leaving his homeland to Moses leading Israel through the wilderness, from the disciples leaving their fishing nets at the word of Jesus to Paul turning from persecutor to apostle, the Bible is a sustained narrative about what happens when people hear God's voice and choose to obey, and what happens when they hear and choose not to. The stakes in every case are high. And the call...

Repentance and Living a Holy Life Two words that make many people deeply uncomfortable, repentance and holiness. Repentance sounds like self-flagellation, like an endless cycle of guilt and shame that never quite resolves. And holiness sounds like impossible perfectionism, a standard so high that ordinary believers can only look up at it from a great distance and feel inadequate. These associations are understandable but they are profoundly mistaken, and the mistaken associations have robbed countless believers of two of the most liberating and most life-giving realities in the entire Christian experience. True biblical repentance is not primarily about guilt, it is about freedom. It is the turning of a person from one direction to another, from one allegiance to another, from one way of living to another, and that turning, rather than being a burden, is the doorway to the most genuine freedom any human being can experience. And true biblical holiness is not the grim performance of r...

God's Healing Power Is God still a healer today? This question sits at the intersection of faith and experience in a way that makes many believers genuinely uncomfortable. On one hand the Bible is filled, from cover to cover, with accounts of God healing the sick, restoring the broken and bringing life out of death. On the other hand most believers have prayed for healing, for themselves or for someone they love, and not received what they prayed for. The gap between what the Bible promises and what we experience can be one of the most faith-testing realities in the Christian life. This study is not going to offer easy answers or formulaic solutions to the mystery of healing. It is going to take the Bible seriously, exploring what Scripture actually says about God's healing power across both Testaments, while also being honest about the complexity and the mystery that surrounds healing in the present age. Because both of these things are true simultaneously: God is genuinely ...