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

A month ago I was meeting with the leader of a ministry which was new to me. They have been in existence for nearly a decade but I really didn’t know much about them but I agreed to take a meeting to find out more. I’ve been asked for many years how Susan and I decide which ministries we should financially support and those we don’t. There’s no science or formula I’ve ever read that Christians can apply to know for certain. However, here are a few important questions I try t

"I'm thinking of doing something different vocationally. I've been in a job that's been OK, but I'm bored and there's not much room for advancement. But, I just don't know what the will of God is for my next job. I just don't want to make the wrong move." I'll bet you, yourself have sought an answer from God for any number of issues from what college to attend, who to marry, whether to serve in ministry – the list is probably endless. Here's what we really want to know: Is it

I was sitting at Starbucks a year and a half ago on a fine fall day with a young man about to graduate from college in the spring. He and I had met a number of times before when he was going through a crisis of faith over the death of a friend, but today he had a completely different dilemma. "I want to know what God's will is for my life. Is there any way I can know that with certainty?" "Yes, there is," I said. But, what I was about to tell him, wasn't what he wanted to hea

Every Christian knows that Jesus told his disciples in several of the gospels, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Matt. 16:24. And that command applies to anyone who claims to be a Christian today. So, quick, before you read on please stop and try defining that phrase. What does it actually mean to follow Jesus in 2026? I wasn’t kidding. If you haven’t answered my question, please do it now before reading on. I think the