Why Do These Pentecostals Keep Growing?: Well, I'd have some theological nuances I’d like to bring in, but from a sociological perspective my response is, “I wouldn’t downplay what is in the engine.” You don’t care for some of their expression? That’s fine. But Pentecostals are trying to reach the lost and grow the Kingdom.

How Not To Be A Racist: A recent study reveals that the majority of African-Americans still believe that race is a huge issue in our society, while the majority of whites do not think that race is a significant factor.  I’m not here to affirm or dispute the report, but at the very least, what these findings reveal is the continued chasm that exists between these two ethnicities.

9 Step To Putting That Sin To Death: All throughout the New Testament we are told to put our sin to death. For example, in Colossians 3 Paul says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” How do you do that? How do you stop a sin, and how do you stop an especially stubborn and deep-rooted sin? Is there any hope? I want to track with John Owen here (via his great work Overcoming Sin and Temptation) and give a list of 9 things you need to do to overcome sin. Consider that sin that is prevalent in your life and then consider each of these 9 steps.

Give Us This Day Our Daily News: Even more, we must pray as events scroll across the screen. Develop this discipline. Let your news intake get you out of yourself and move you to pray, and then to act as you are able. Let the news be an instigator to get you involved in all that God is doing in this world that belongs—without hype, sensationalism or slant—to Him. 

The Missing Ingredient In Many Sermons: From a guy who has to fight every single day to have my heart moved by the gospel, hear my plea: don’t be content to just give your hearers a comprehensive tour guide through a passage, connect the dots to show the glory, grandeur and greatness of God in it so they can join you in marveling at the glorious view. It’s a little thing, but it makes a big difference for you and the church.

A Word About Men And Marriage: I’m tired of men who act like boys. Just because the woman is a weaker vessel doesn’t mean you get to abuse her with your cold immaturity (1 Peter 3:7). Where are the tender-hearted men who cry over their sin instead of their football game? Where are the men who lead like Jesus, selflessly sacrificing their time, energy, and love for the sake of their family? I know you’re out there. Stay the course. And listen, young men who wish to be married, don’t act like a child. You are a man.

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Living Sent (For The Relationally Challenged): For the relationally-challenged, any time the topic of sharing the gospel with another human being comes up, anxiety, guilt and countless questions are not far behind. These are all valid questions and concerns, but let me put you at ease. Living sent is all about loving people to Jesus, as best you can.

Don't Expect Unbelievers To Act Like Believers: So often I see Christians acting surprised that their non-Christian friends or family members are acting like non-Christians. John Owen addresses this in his great work Overcoming Sin and Temptation. The book deals with the subject of mortification, of putting sin to death, and Owen dedicates one chapter to explaining why only Christians can behave like Christians.

Seven Things To Pray For Your Children: Here are seven helpful, specific things to pray for your children.

Men: Made For Submission: As a Christian man, I am learning to trade autonomy for submission, fighting to reverse my tendency to grasp for the same false freedom Adam craved. I am learning to submit to these grace-granted bonds.

God Alone Chooses The Day You Die, Not You: Life is the most irreplaceable and fundamental condition of the human experience, and I implore Brittany and others considering her example to take a long, hard look at the consequences of a decision that is so fatal, and worst of all, so final.

Behold Your Mother: It seems we need to recover this ethic in church life. I fear that our good desire to reach the next generation becomes an obsession with youth so much so that we often leave behind the aging. I wonder if we’ve imbibed too much of our culture’s pragmatic utilitarianism that discards people when they are no longer at peak usefulness.

Houston, We Have A Constitution: The separation of church and state means that we will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and we will. But the preaching of the church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will not hand it over to him. Not now. Not ever.

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Jesus Cares About Your Words: Jesus is Lord over all. And as the Cosmic Emperor, he reigns over Neptune, pinwheel galaxies, birds, blades of grass, and our words. Jesus is Lord over our sentences. The Lordship of Christ has no boundaries. There is not an area of our lives that we can rope off and tell Jesus, “Not here, bub.” Jesus cares about our speech.

A Gospeled Church: You cannot grow in holiness and holier-than-thou-ness at the same time. So a church that makes its main thing the gospel, and when faced with sin in its ranks doesn’t simply crack the whip of the law but says “remember the gospel,” should gradually be seeing grace coming to bear.

You Must Put Sin To Death: Owen says that Christians—the choicest Christians—hate sin and pursue it to its death. Could there be a conclusion that is farther from the world around us? The world, the flesh, and the devil tell us to pursue our sin, to enjoy our sin, to go deeper and deeper into our sin, to identify ourselves by our sin, to become our sin. God’s Word tells us to identify our sin, to hate our sin, to destroy our sin. And by God’s grace we can do that very thing. He can give us a revulsion toward our sin, and then empower us to kill it. Praise God!

He Must Increase; Our Churches Must Decrease: There is one thing that the churches experiencing historic revival have in common: they seemed overrun with the sense of the glory of God. They preached the gospel and the response was, as some describe, that “glory came down.”

Good News For The Poor: The church has made mistakes in the past by farming out, almost exclusively, social justice-type ministries to parachurch organizations. The church has also been guilty of paternalism and malevolent generosity when it comes to things such as soup kitchens, food pantries, and so forth. We’ve too often confused free handouts with Christian ministry. Instead, we should be evangelizing, discipling, equipping, and sending out people as they minister within local churches.

A Tale Of Two Mars Hills: A drift in doctrine, a drift from the truth, has a devastating impact. There is a massive difference in holding tightly to the “faith delivered once and for all to the saints” and continually questioning, as Satan did in the garden, “Did God really say…?” Putting on trial what the Lord has clearly declared is the antithesis of watching your doctrine. One Mars Hill, and numerous observers, has been adversely impacted by a failure to closely watch life, and one by a failure to watch doctrine.

When You Wonder Who Is Thinking Of You: The trail of tears is thinking of myself and looking for others to give to me. The trail of joy and blessing is thinking of God and others. The fight that so often happens in my heart happens because this isn't a natural response, but it is possible by the Holy Spirit who resides in me.

4 Things God Says To Singles: About 35 percent of adult church members in Britain are single, so clearly the subject of singleness has considerable personal interest to many people in our churches. Each single person will have a different experience. There are age differences. Being single at 20 is very different from being single at 30, 40, or 70. There are circumstantial differences: some have never married, while others are divorcees, widows, or widowers. And there are experiential differences: some have chosen to be single and are basically content; others long to be married and feel frustrated. What does the Bible say to all these people?

Ten Simple Ways Your Church Can Serve Foster Families: Foster care is a Church problem, not a state child welfare problem. It is a Gospel issue first, not a government issue. The Church has both the duty and privilege to speak on behalf of and stand for the sake of those who cannot speak and stand for themselves because that is exactly what God has done for us through Jesus. That's the Gospel.

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There and Back Again: Except, that is, for one night when I panicked. I was lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep. This was the first time I had faced the death of someone close. All at once, it occurred to me that we had no idea what would happen to my grandmother. None of us had closed our eyes in death, and that meant none of us knew what she would see when she opened them. The horror of the unknown washed over me. I realized it wasn't really her death that I was afraid of. It was my own.

7 Symptoms of Eternity Amnesia: Everyone in ministry gets discouraged by difficulties and struggles, but sometimes we bring more suffering on ourselves because we forget eternity. Could it be that there are times when you live and minister as if there is no such thing as forever?

To Experience God's Love: Many Christians live at a great distance from a felt experience of the love of God. So much Christianity in the West is shallow and satisfied. It affirms a creed, but it so often lacks spiritual life. Across the country there are millions of people who have a faith, who've been brought up in the church to believe Jesus died and rose, but they have no living experience of God's love.

9 Ways To Battle Depression, Condemnation and Anxiety: I know from personal experience the difficulty of battling depression, condemnation and anxiety. The fight can take many forms, ranging from legalism to thoughts of suicide. Whatever the case, it is all overwhelming. Though each of us faces unique circumstances, here are a few lessons I have learned that I pray will help as you, too, battle depression, condemnation and anxiety.

The Porn-Free Family Plan: I want to protect my children in a world like this, but I want to do more than that. I want to disciple my children to live virtuously, to use these new technologies for good purposes instead of bad ones. I believe this is a crucial part of my calling as a parent. To address this great need, I have put together what I call The Porn-Free Family Plan. It is a plan designed to protect my children from online dangers so that I can train them to use their devices and technologies well.

Why Doesn't God Always Heal The Sick: It’s hard to imagine a more difficult, confusing, and controversial topic than why God chooses not to heal in response to the intercessory pleas of his people. I don’t profess to have all the answers, but I think I’ve got a few.

‘ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED’, OR ‘PRESERVATION AND PERSEVERANCE IN CHRIST’?: At that point, the challenge is to explain a doctrine of perseverance that gives both the full assurance that those “whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30), as well as the need to “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Col. 1:23).

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Although I never met Ronnie, although he was not famous, although we lived thousands of miles apart, he had a significant impact on my life and my faith, and I felt compelled to write a few words about him.  Back in 2010 I saw a video of a sermon preached by a young man from an Acts 29 church in Texas.  It was not your typical sermon, but was rather a series of 47 portions of scripture put together, memorized and recited before the church by a man named Ronnie Smith.  Something about watching this 28 minute video moved me deeply.  I saw in what Ronnie had done, something genuinely beautiful.  And when you experience something you believe to be genuinely beautiful, you cannot help but to share it with others.

And so, I committed myself to memorizing this work, which Ronnie called “The History of Redemption”.  I must have watched this video 50 or 60 times.  And I must have talked about it so much, that pastor Rob eventually asked me to write a weekly blog post on each of these 47 sections of scripture for our church.  And so, over the course of 2011, that is what I did.  I invested countless hours in reading, listening to, memorizing and writing, all catalyzed by what Ronnie had done.  He was a young man, about my age, and I knew nothing else about him, except that he was a faithful servant of Christ who was a part of a church in Texas.  

Last week, Ronnie was murdered in Benghazi, Libya.  He was living there with his wife and young son, and was working as a chemistry teacher at the international school, and he was shot dead while jogging.  I believe that God called Ronnie and his wife to move to Benghazi, one of the most violent and broken cities on this planet, because He (God) loves those people.  And Ronnie and his wife went because they had been filled with a hope that extends into eternity and they desired to share this hope with those who have no hope.  Although I never met Ronnie, and I still know very little about him, I am quite sure that he understood they very real possibility of facing death in a place such as this.  And still he went, to love and to serve the people of Libya and to love and serve his God and Savior.  Ronnie paid the ultimate price for his obedience to Christ, and I am confident that in the moments following his death, he heard the voice of God Himself gently whispering in his ear, “well done, good and faithful servant”.

Although today we are saddened and grieve the loss of Ronnie, his life was not wasted.  And today, be sure of this, that Ronnie is not sad.  

I praise God for Ronnie’s life.  His was a life lived with absolute direction and purpose for the glory of God.   And as we have brothers and sisters in our church preparing to move to the Middle East, motivated by the same love that motivated Ronnie, this is a painful reminder to me, to not only encourage them and support them and pray for their fruitfulness, but also to pray for their safety, to pray daily, to pray without ceasing.  It is also a reminder to me that ultimately our hope is not in the length of our days or what we accomplish, but in a God who can and will use our lives to bring glory to Himself.  For He can use all things for good for those who love him and are called according to His purpose.  Ronnie’s life was a testimony to his love for God, and now our prayer is that God would use his death as a catalyst for the forwarding of the Gospel and the hope to which we cling.  This is a worthy cause.  There is no greater cause.  

Below is the video of Ronnie preaching “The History of Redemption”:

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” - Psalm 116:15

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