If you asked ten Christians, "Where should I give my financial gifts?" Almost all would tell you, "Give first to your local church." But after that you're likely to get ten different answers depending on each person's passion and giving history. Older Christians tend to lean heavily toward missions, Bible translation, large capital projects and Christian education while younger Christians generally favor clean water and social justice ministries. And if you look only to the N

There's almost no area of stewardship for Christians that has had more influence on inheritance than the Old Testament. Stories of leaving everything one owns to their children with the largest portion going to the oldest son are in many books of the Old Testament. God in Numbers 27:8-11 even laid out how an inheritance should be administered. If these Patriarchs of the Bible, loved by God passed their wealth on to their families, case closed! And Proverbs 13:22a says, "A goo

If you’ve heard, “I just don’t care” from your kids, or other young Christians about things you think Christians really ought to care about deeply, you’re not alone. A few years ago, I was having dinner with a few great young people – students at a local Christian college. We were talking about same-sex marriage and what the Bible says about same-sex, sex. At the end of our extensive discussion, one of the young men said, “I just don’t care – it’s just not a big deal to me, o

Decades ago my wife Susan and I began receiving phone calls from our married children who had recently had babies asking about baptism. Here was their dilemma: All three of our sons-in-laws were raised in covenantal, calvinistic churches where they were baptized as infants. Now their parents really wanted their grandchildren baptized as well. Similarly, our children were baptized as infants. However, we raised them from middle school on believing that baptism was only for old

A few years ago, I was asked by a man who was baptized as an infant if he should be baptized now as an adult. “It depends,” I said. Have you ever publicly pledged your allegiance to Jesus and meant it?” “No I’ve not. I mean as a high school kid I stood up with a whole group of kids from my church and confirmed I was a Christian, but I'm not sure if I even knew what that meant. And I attend church regular;y and call myself a Christian.” “Then I think you might want to consider

Who cares? Some of your children or grandchildren may be asking, “Who cares? What difference does it make that I know anything about the Reformation?” Good question actually. Here’s why. I grew up thinking that any church which believed things our church, or denomination didn’t was in error and may not even be Christians. I think it’s good for all Christians to understand that true Christians can disagree on many theological issues as long as they understand saving faith is

A few months ago I was on a ZOOM call with five college students all professing Christians. Good kids with a weekly Bible study. They contacted me and said they had lots of questions about the Bible and how to apply it to real life and would I be willing to help them weekly. I told them, “I’d go straight to hell if I said no!” Their first question surprised me. “Why are there so many different denominations if we’re all reading the same Bible?” So I began by explaining that f

Christians and non-Christians have been asking these questions for thousands of years. "If God loves the whole world why doesn't he just forgive everyone from all of their sins, or at least the 'good people'?" And why did God require his Son to pay for our problem?" Great questions. The problem is the explanations we traditionally give don't always make sense even to us because we're not God. And God hasn't made it crystal clear why he's chosen the plan he did to deal with si

Redemption is a word almost no one who isn’t a Christian uses anymore. When I was a kid to encourage customers to buy at their store merchants offered Green Stamps. For every dollar you spent they’d give you an actual green stamp. My mother would save them up in a drawer until we had a lot of them then we licked them and glued in a little book with a dozen pages. When we had enough books she would drive to the Green Stamp Store and she would “redeem them” to “buy” merchandis