Resources by Topic: Christian Life

Many people have asked me how Nanci is doing since our last update in early September on her CaringBridge page. There has been nothing new to report since the outcome of her last test, but she'll have another test soon. I rarely repost the latest updates and prayer requests from CaringBridge on my blog, but since this test is significant, I’m posting this one since we would love your prayers.

Time with God is the fountain from which holiness, joy, and delight flow. It reminds us who we are and whose we are.

I really appreciated this article by Joe Rigney, assistant professor of theology and literature at Bethlehem College & Seminary and author of The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts.  It’s a great and practical explanation of what it means to obey the command in James 1:22 to be a doer of God’s Word.

I have some besetting sins in my life that I commit on occasion, and I’m fearful that God has killed or allowed my dogs to die because of my sin as a way of punishing me. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve mentioned my wife Nanci’s health issues, and her battle with cancer. I share about it now because some of you have health issues, and most of you have spouses, children, parents, other family and/or friends who are facing them and all kinds of other challenges. I hope this will encourage you and give you some perspective.

I love these perspectives from Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle (1816–1900) on preparing for death by living well. With every passing year, each of us have more precious family and friends who have gone to be with Christ. As we look forward to the day when we too will see Jesus face to face, may we lean into and serve Him like never before. 

Time and again it was said of the people of Israel, “But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them” (2 Chronicles 15:4). It was in Jonah’s darkest hour, in his most stressful circumstances that he said this: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me” (Jonah 2:2).

If your closest friends don’t follow Jesus, you’ll have all kinds of daily reasons not to follow Him. If they do follow Jesus, positive peer pressure will hold you accountable to the life of discipleship.

My friend Doug Nichols sent me the following as advice to new missionaries. But as I read it, it struck me that 95% of it is good advice for all believers. So I’m changing the title and commend this for the reading of both missionaries and all the rest of us.

Question from a reader: In your Heaven book, you say that if we are looking for a Bible-teaching church to contact your ministry. I was brought up in church and have gone to several, but I find the focus seems to be more on social connections and entertainment. I study your books and listen to solid Bible teaching. I do not really understand why I need to find a church, but your book seems to say it is necessary. Can you explain why?

For years, when my daughters were young and I was a pastor, I lived under the tyranny of the telephone. I treated the ringing of the phone as a divine mandate.

Each phase of life is different, with its own challenges but also its own rewards. The way to contentment is to trust God’s purposes in our present circumstances.

Paradoxes are not contradictions, but apparent contradictions that are unresolved in our minds, but resolved in God’s. The universe, though full of paradoxes, is not full of contradictions. So is the Christian life, as Jen Pollock Michel points out in the following article.

In my twenties, I was very independent. Even though I came to Christ when I was in high school, in pastoral ministry I discovered—and the people who worked with me, I’m sure, discovered—that I too was very self-reliant.