rebelling against low expectations
Should I enter the mission field? Who should I marry? What career do I choose? The teenage years carry with them a world of daunting decisions. At times it can feel as if the rest of your life needs to be mapped out by senior year. You may frequently wonder “What is God’s will for my life?” and wish He’d reveal the answer on a flashing billboard. God’s will just...
The dawn of a new year is swiftly approaching, and with it comes the famed New Year resolutions. If I were to guess, one of the most popular New Year resolutions for Christians is some sort of Bible reading plan. Most of us want to improve our daily habits for our time in Scripture. For some, that means reading the Bible more consistently. For others, it means extending mere reading into a...
Will there be social media in eternity? As redeemed children of God, we eagerly await new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness Himself dwells (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:3) and where our broken bodies will be made like Christ’s: glorified and perfected (see Philippians 3:21). What might glorified and perfected social media look like–stripped of everything that too often...
Culture is everywhere. Literally. Culture is everywhere. It’s wherever people are. We’re a part of it, and it’s a part of us. It’s inescapable and wonderful. But it’s also true in the sense that everybody’s talking about it. Culture is everywhere in the Church: books, sermons, teaching series, conversations, mission statements. Everywhere we turn, we’re...
Christians tend to have two extremes when thinking about heresy. Some see heresy everywhere. If heresy simply means “whatever contradicts scripture”, we’ll see heresy in any biblical interpretation or doctrinal belief that disagrees with our own. We’ll see heresy in our friends, in our pastors, and—of course—anywhere in social media. (Conveniently enough, we’ll...
We don’t get to choose the world we’re born into. Society doesn’t pause to offer us our choice of the cultural values, global issues, or historical events that will characterize the version of Planet Earth we’ll be a part of. We inherit the world as it is. It’s a lot like a family heirloom. Each generation passes down a world–sometimes dusty, sometimes broken...
Recently, hundreds of people gathered in my state and others to protest stay-at-home regulations put in place by the state government. Among the protesters were small-business owners struggling to maintain their businesses, parents out of work and ineligible for unemployment benefits, people awaiting care that has been deprioritized, and others who were simply unconvinced of the danger of COVID...
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” — 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Our generation of Christians has become the epitome of lukewarmness. We have become so much like the world, either in a compromising state of spiritual laziness...
rebelling against low expectations
