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Psalm of the Cross

But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts (Psalm 22:9). Do you ever find it difficult to trust God? If so, an important key to help you is to develop a love for Him and His Word. People I’ve met who really love […]

Follow the Leader

Are you a leader? If you think of leadership only as a rare spiritual gift (Romans 12:6-8), you’ll likely answer, “No.” Certainly God calls some to a unique level of leadership in the church, and their special role deserves special honor (Ephesians 4:11, 12; 1 Timothy 5:17; Hebrews 13:17). But what if leadership is broader than […]

Disunity in Christ

I grew up in a low-income, inner city area in Houston, Texas, and my high school mainly consisted of African-American and Hispanic students. In that building, the young girls avoided a certain staircase where many of the African-American boys lingered. One day when running late to class, I took that stairwell to avoid being tardy. […]

Which Word?

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14, NASB). As January turns into February, we are halfway between the Solo Christo issue, already in your hands, and the Sola Scriptura issue, which is […]

Uniting the Testaments

Something is always lost in translation. That is a sickening axiom to all who have a sacred book in their non-native tongue. But because it is true, we are forced to translate in imaginative ways in order to benefit the reader most. Whether you read a word-for-word or a thought-for-thought translation of the Bible, you […]

Post-Truth

Have you heard the news? Oxford Dictionaries has selected post-truth as its 2016 Word of the Year. What does this compound word mean? Definition: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Though coined in the early 1990’s, usage apparently […]

Claimed by the Shepherd

I am a veterinary epidemiologist. I wake up at 4 a.m. and plod barefoot through my morning routine: Put kettle on, switch off outside lights, let Bernie (my baby Saint Bernard) in for a cuddle, make coffee, help Bernie onto the bed, climb back into bed, drink coffee, read Bible verse, and then mull over […]

Identify Yourself

Republican or Democrat? Conservative or liberal? Cubs or Dodgers? Seahawks or Cowboys? There are countless ways to identify oneself. And though we may not be an actual player on a favorite sports team, we still identify with it, exulting, “We won!” A stunning moment for viewers of the 2016 Olympic Games came when two members […]

His Struggles and Ours

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is one of the most striking and memorable in the New Testament (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12, 13; Luke 4:1-13). Temptations to turn stones into bread, to leap from high pinnacles, and to worship at the feet of evil make for a larger-than-life plot — a heroic battle […]

Christ Alone

The phrase Christ alone is at the center of the well-known declaration of the sixteenth century Reformers. They based their teachings on God’s justification of those who come to Him by His sovereign grace alone, through faith alone, grounded in Christ alone, for His glory alone.1 Another phrase the Reformers emphasized was Scripture alone. They […]