When you were born, your parents gave you a name. You didn’t pick it. They did. And that has been your identity ever since. When you were born again, God gave you a new name. You didn’t pick it. He did. And, truly, that has become your identity ever since. Seven hundred years before Christ came, the prophet Isaiah foretold of that day when God’s people “shall be called…

There are some folks who want to make the Bible out to be this overly complicated, mystically complex book that is highly difficult to understand. Are there “some things hard to understand” in it (cf. 2 Pet. 3:16)? Yes. Some. And the Bible acknowledges that. But note that it does not say, “Impossible to understand” or “You’ll never understand.” When Satan asked Eve what God had said,…

Most decisions as a Christian are not that hard. Some folks might tend to make them hard (like a child who makes a household chore a harder task than it really is), but they are not actually “burdensome” (1 John 5:3). But there are some decisions that are quite hard. Some decisions (to become or to remain faithful as a Christian) require true sacrifice. Some…

King David found himself in a tempting situation with Bathsheba—he should have walked away, but he walked into sin. Balaam intentionally put himself in a tempting situation to gratify the king—he should have never been there. Joseph was in his workplace but found himself alone with a woman who was not his wife, who was enticing him—he fled and ran outside. Christian friends, our…

Have you ever read a book and thought, “So-and-so would really like this”? Have you ever gone to an event and thought, “So-and-so should have come—they would have loved this”? Or, maybe you’ve thought, “I wish so-and-so was here—this would have been really enjoyable together”? As Christians, we, no doubt, think something like that often about our friends. In 1969, Kurt F. Kaiser wrote a hymn…