As we head into this Easter season, let’s shift our focus from what Jesus has done for us to how we might be able to give him a costly and purposeful gift that touches his heart and makes sure that He knows how much He means to us.
A crisis often serves to reveal our hidden fears that Jesus doesn’t really care about what happens to us. But what if Jesus allows crises to expose those fears, so that we will learn to cry out to Him, to trust His heart, and to take Him more seriously?
The people who talked to Jesus got to see His heart on display and learn things about Him that otherwise they wouldn’t have known. A conversation Jesus had with a woman at a well in Samaria illustrates this point and shows us what we can expect to learn about Jesus when we engage Him in…
In times of trouble, we must anchor our souls to the truths that God is God, that God is present, that God will help us, and that God has a plan. This will lead us to respond to God by being still before Him, reflecting upon His works, affirming what we know is true, and…
First Baptist Church family and friends, By now everyone has heard about the coronavirus and the extraordinary and unprecedented lengths that our society and government are taking to lessen the spread of this disease. It’s something that I’ve not seen in my lifetime. It’s clear that people are afraid, and understandably so. Most…
The religion that Jesus found so toxic was hypocritical and oppressive. It tried to impress people with an external piety that completely missed the point of straight-forward faithfulness to God. It focused on trivial rule-keeping at the expense of character and relationship, all the while disguising the sickness within.
Though most religious people in Jesus’ day hated Him, Jesus didn’t hate religion. He knew that religion existed to teach humans who were already in relationship with God how to live out that relationship in their everyday life. What he did hate was how the religion God gave His people had been twisted to keep…