Then I paused: Wait — that’s the gospel. That’s why Jesus came! The entire meaning of Christmas is bound up in this beautiful truth: We were so deeply stained by sin that we could do nothing to save ourselves, nothing to remove the wickedness within. We needed to be completely remade. We needed a Savior to come into the world and pay the penalty we could not pay.
Read MoreSince God cares about this, so should we. Our families can play a vital role in God’s global plan even without leaving our local communities. We can fulfill our role as the primary disciplers of our kids and guide our families in cultivating a heart for the nations. And it doesn't have to be time-consuming.
Read MoreWe want our kids to honor the Lord in everything, so others would see their lives and give glory to their Father in Heaven (Matthew 5:16). This is God’s purpose in creating humanity, and it’s also our objective in parenting. In the midst of all the conversations about how to help our kids discover who they are, we’ve completely overlooked the importance of teaching them what they are: human beings, created in God’s image.
Read MoreWe have an opportunity to tell the sufferer and the struggler, “The result of walking with the Spirit will be goodness in your life, and goodness is good for you and for everyone else.” Yes, we will suffer. Yes, we will struggle. But how sweet it is of God to grow goodness in our lives through our relationship with him! It’s okay to be okay, and it’s more than okay to stay that way.
Read MoreOur defining moments may start with a quiet conversation with a friend, an unexpected test result, or in the case of Betsy Childs Howard’s latest Arlo and the Keep-Out Club, a run-of-the-mill trip to the playground with your dad.
Read MoreWhile the resurrection story is central to our faith, it’s a story most Christians are so familiar with that it becomes easy to breeze right by the empty tomb. We could use a fresh entry point to remind believers how massive this moment of sacrificial generosity and overwhelming grace actually is. Thankfully, Joshua Cooley offers a great hook to anchor us to the beauty of the resurrection in his latest kids book, EMPTY!
Read MoreWhether you’re a relatively new believer or a longtime follower of Jesus, we should never lose sight of the unending spiritual blessings that are ours through the resurrection. Jesus’s empty tomb is the greatest empty in the history of emptiness!
Read MoreIt might seem counterintuitive to teach our teenagers about the heretics throughout church history, but in order to guard them against the false teachers of today we would do well to educate them about the false teachers of yesterday.
Read MoreWear a cross and you signal you’re a Christian; bear the cross and you prove it. Believers today can feel surprised by trials or tempted to adopt a victim mentality when we encounter them. Luther, by contrast, believed that to know Christ, we must know him in his sufferings.
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