JOY WHEN WE FAIL June 25, 2020 | Psalm 73 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue On his album American Prodigal, Christian musician David Crowder sings: As for me, it is good to be near God. PSALM 73:28 “Troubles of this world, will wither up and die That river of tears made by the lonely, someday will […]
AS GOOD AS HIS WORD April 29, 2020 | Matthew 28:1–15 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the linchpin of the Christian faith. “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of […]
AN UNLIKELY BELIEVER April 19, 2020 | Matthew 15:21–28 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Who are your heroes of faith? They may be martyrs who faced death for the sake of the gospel or missionaries who have endured hardship. These individuals look like heroes, at least to us. They expect great things from God and attempt […]
SURPRISED BY HIS POWER April 6, 2020 | Matthew 8:23–34 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue What makes you fearful? Spiders? Lightning storms? The dark? Fear can stop us in our tracks and make our heart beat faster. But not all fear is bad. The Bible describes a different type of fear, one that implies an attitude […]
AMAZED BY HIS TEACHING April 5, 2020 | Matthew 7:24–29 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue A popular website allows students to rate their college professors. The evaluations rate the professor by overall quality and level of difficulty. Students can also include comments about their experience. How would Jesus have scored on such a site? According to […]
A SURPRISING ARRIVAL April 1, 2020 | Matthew 1 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Surprises can be paralyzing . . . or at least for 1/20th of a second. That’s what Tania Luna, a researcher who studies how surprise affects the brain, says. She says surprises can freeze our attention and intensify our emotions. She will […]
SERVING SIDE BY SIDE February 29, 2020 | Esther 9:29–10:3 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue When the Church operates according to God’s design, we serve effectively to accomplish His will. Unity should be the hallmark of God’s people, but it’s not always easy. From biblical times to this present day, God has drawn a variety of […]
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE February 22, 2020 | Esther 7:5–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue The idiom “stuck between a rock and a hard place” can be traced back to Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, in which Odysseus must pass between Scylla, a cliff-dwelling monster (the rock), and Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool (the hard place). […]
February 19, 2020 | Esther 6:4–9 This Month’s Issue According to a recent study, fame is now the number one goal of preteens. “Being famous” catapulted from sixteenth place all the way to first, leap-frogging over long-standing life goals such as having a family, working a good job, or living in community. The researchers connect […]
CHARACTER TRANSFORMED February 15, 2020 | Esther 5:1–5 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Don’t you love it when a character finally learns an important lesson and changes for the better? This transformation, in literature, is called the “character arc”—the way in which the main character develops and grows as a result of the story’s conflict. And […]