'faith' Tagged Posts (Page 19)
Check-In On Your Brothers
One of the quasi-questionable ways that society has misled the male population over the generations is by encouraging us to tighten our lips and “buck up” every single time whenever something negative happens in our lives. You know, “shut up and be a man!” That’s not necessarily 100% poor advice. Depending on how you look at it, it is actually partially good advice. In fact, 1 Corinthians 6:13 instructs us to “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like…
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Back in the “ancient” times of computers (AKA, before the Internet started invading peoples’ lives in the mid-1990s), there was an acronym that computer programmers and data analysts liked to throw about quite a bit: GIGO. It stood for “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Simply put, if you typed in bad input or data into a computer, you would get bad output. For instance, if you didn’t quite know where to insert the correct code in a program or place the wrong…
111 Ways For Christian Men (and Women) To Be More Romantic
When it comes to demonstrating how much we love our spouses or our girlfriends, we men can almost be like befuddled cavemen banging rocks together. Yes, we as Christians can become adept at knowing high-level spiritual or theological matters, but admittedly many men can have a very limited capacity for good, romantic ideas. To a lot of us, the word “romance” equates to red roses, a box of chocolates, and Valentine’s Day dinner by candlelight. Or we think of sitting…
Why You Need to Develop a Wartime Attitude
Folks, do you have a wartime attitude or a peacetime mentality in your everyday lives? The last time we had nationwide wartime mindsets here in America and the UK was nearly 80 years ago during World War 2. If you’re not familiar with it, the “war effort” here at home was a spirit of cooperation whereby the general civilian populace joined together with our military and industry by doing things like rationing and by collecting and recycling materials such as…
Recommended Reading – My Top 11 Favorite Books
I love making lists of things, and it’s about time I make one on what I consider to be my all-time, top 10 (alright, 11), crème de la crème, favorite, most important books ever written. These encompass what I think is recommended reading for all my blog readers. When I compiled these, I noticed that all but one have to do with spirituality and that they are all non-fiction (with a fictional devotional story comprising of the second half of…
Head, Heart, and Hands
Head, Heart, and Hands Theologian and pastor Erik Thoennes once succinctly summarized the three-prong approach to our spiritual growth by saying, “our theology (right thinking) should always lead to doxology (right worship) and orthopraxy (right practice), or else we have a major disconnect in our theology.” Our Christian lives are more than just us getting saved by the grace of God through the cross of Jesus. Yes, that is the Gospel, the very core of our faith which we celebrate…
A Kick in the Pants
Let’s see a show of hands to all of you who have seen the following scenario in your life before. You see a friend or relative in the midst of some tough life struggles and witness him or her having to wrestle with things like moral predicaments and spiritual imbroglios. For some reason, they are hesitant or half-hearted to press forward, or worse, they have come to a functional gridlock of sorts. You, being a dedicated Christian, may see what…
Swing For the Fences
Well-known Christian author and apologist Lee Strobel once talked about a man he once knew named Bill McMillen. Bill was a successful financial consultant who never had a degree in theology and never worked on staff at a church. But Bill was radically saved by Jesus and used every opportunity he had to talk to others about his Savior. He went all-out every chance he got; Bill would go the proverbial “above and beyond” in all of his interactions with…
Revenge
Ah, revenge. We’ve all known what it is like to be betrayed, hurt, lied to, and generally screwed over. And we have all experienced multiple times where we wanted to exact revenge against the perpetrator. The feeling of getting bloody, satisfying payback for someone done wrong against someone else has provided the basis for some of our favorite stories, as it allows us to vicariously live out our fantasies of revenge through the protagonists’ eyes. For instance, we feel the…
The Biblical Order of the Family, and Dispelling Misconceptions About it
It’s way too easy to point at a multitude of sources and blurt out, “now that is the reason society is going downhill!” In most cases, with these reasons both being direct and indirect negative influences, I honestly think that the majority of woes in our society can be fixed if not only if we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but also if we completely abandon the world’s definition of family and wholly embrace God’s Biblical standard for…
In Evangelism, Tell a Story
I feel that one of the biggest hindrances in spreading the Gospel is that we often don’t know how to break the ice with people. It’s almost like how it was back in your dating days (of course, some of you are still in that dating phase!) when you wanted with all of your might to approach the beautiful girl and acquire her phone number, only to fearfully hold back because you’re too afraid of saying the wrong thing and…
Using Questions With Evangelism
You may think that having an inventory of “salvation verses” memorized such as those that comprise the famous “Romans Road,” along with a gutsy attitude, to be your main tactic in spreading the Gospel to the unreached. That is excellent, but I also think that asking questions during evangelism is one of the most powerful and effective approaches you can take. You may not initially think of our Lord Jesus Christ being an evangelist, but He was. Luke 4:43 reads,”But…
Embrace Your Struggles
Have you ever been in the midst of the most depressing, exhausting, unrelenting season of your life, and it never seems to end? Did you ever go through death, joblessness, sickness, financial difficulties, divorce, heartache, or several other issues that can change the course of your life? Well, who hasn’t? If you find yourself in that situation, I advise you to think differently…Don’t give up, brothers and sisters. Keep pressing on. Why? Because the tough times teach us about life.…
10 Things That Block Prayer From Being Answered
Without prayer, our life in Christ is nothing. The Apostle Paul instructs us, “…but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6b). Prayer is simply communicating with God, most often by verbally speaking out requests and petitions, giving Him thanksgiving and worship, and coming to Him with confession of sin. We should pray often; and in fact, more than that: “pray without ceasing,” according to 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Are there times when…
How My Wife and I Pray and Study the Bible Together
One of the most imperative things you can do with your spouse (this could also apply to a long-term boyfriend/girlfriend or fiancée/fiancé) is spending regular, quality “God time” with him or her. Doing so will strengthen and deepen your faith, and draw you closer to each other as you draw nearer to God. What does this entail, you might ask? It can include a certain amount of Bible reading, discussion and reflection, and praying together. I’ve decided to “peel back the…
Don’t Water Down Your Christianity – Go All-In For Christ!
“Being a Christian isn’t for sissies. It takes a real man to live for God – a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know?” – Johnny Cash From seeker churches and wishy-washy, vague “half messages” to showing “tolerance” to sins in the guise of “love” and slowly integrating worldly philosophies, Biblical Christianity is under the threat of the plague of lukewarmness. Let’s admit it: all the riches and conveniences of modern life have spoiled us. We…
Guess What? Prayer and the Christian Life Isn’t Always About You
Regular, constant prayer is an absolutely essential and indispensable part of the Christian life (1 Thessalonians 5:17, Philippians 4:6). Without it, a follower of Jesus will rapidly grow cold and stagnant and have no continuously, deepening relationship with God. Unfortunately, even with a daily habit of prayer, we sometimes only focus on a laundry list on items that we want God to do for us. Yes, we can pray for people who are mostly in our personal circles. But you have…
What the “Sin Excusers” Always Ignore About Jesus
As Christians, we are truly blessed beyond comprehension that God the Father has made a way for us to be forgiven of all of our wrongdoings, thereby allowing us to come into His holy presence because of the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 3:23 declares, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that means that me, you, and everyone else on the face of the planet have sinned. Yep, you heard that right…EVERYONE…
You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned
Don’t drag your pre-existing philosophies and politics into Christianity. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a conservative, politically speaking. Okay, technically, that’s not 100% true. There was a large portion of my childhood where I was clearly apolitical. It wasn’t really until my early teens that I knew I was a mild-to-moderate fan of President Ronald Reagan. The period from the rest of my teenage years through all of my twenties is when I really developed politically.…
Dream Personal Training
Can you imagine having personal training sessions with one of the world’s leading authorities? Let’s say you were a teenage swimmer, with lofty goals to one day become an Olympic contender. You have genetics, talent, and pure drive, yet…you need something more to rocket you ahead of the competition. What if by the best fortune you’ve ever been given, you were able to pull in the services of none other than Michael Phelps – who by many measurements is the…