The Holy Wow
Holy Wow. It can be elusive and hard to define. But you know it when you see it. Or feel it. Or touch it. It’s those “wow” moments in Scripture that bring pause, when Truth reaches past your protective shell and grabs your heart, leaving you better in any number of...
Grace Reformation
You’ve probably heard the name Martin Luther. And you may know that it was 500 years ago, October 31, 1517, that he made public his 95 Theses, forging a reformation that launched the Protestant movement. One of the biggest biblical concepts that the church had been...
How To Make Jesus’ Day!
Even the nicest, most sacrificial people need to hear a “thank you” every once in awhile. Including Jesus. But before we look at this in Scripture, you need to know that in Jesus’ day, there was a lot of bad blood—hatred, really—between the Jews and an ethnic group...
6 Tips For Getting the Word in Edgewise
If you’ve ever been to the Grand Canyon you may have noticed this phenomenon: When you stand on the edge of the canyon and look out, it’s as if someone put a giant post card in front of you. The view is so massive and overwhelming that it almost doesn’t seem real....
Love!
Interesting point: The English language has only one word for love, which is, “love.” We use the same word to describe our love for pizza as we do to describe our love for friends. But the Greeks distinguished several different types of love, like these: Agape:...
How To Be Like Christ
A few years after Jesus’ ministry on earth, the apostle Paul helped a handful of people plant a church in a city called Philippi. Ten years later, Paul wrote a letter to strengthen this growing church. This letter became the book of Philippians in our Bibles. Tucked...
Serving Up a Big Peace
Imagine the disciples’ situation that first Easter weekend. They’d followed Jesus for three years. They depended on Him for guidance, even for daily things like food. They found His teaching irresistible. They were moved by His mercy and compassion. And they’d just...
Lent: The “21 Day Fix” for Our Souls
Whether or not your faith tradition practices Lent, and whether or not you’ve heard of the recent “21 Day Fix” fitness rage, your soul can benefit from building muscle in the area of saying “no.” This is a vital exercise because when Jesus tells us in Matthew 16 to...
Making a Leap Day Leap
What a unique day: Leap Day, a day we see once every four years. Because one revolution around the sun is slightly more than 365 days, we pick up the slack by adding an extra day on February 29. It’s kinda cool that we all get an extra day. So, have you thought about...
Watch and Pray Hour
This devo is being written days before observing the close of Daylight Savings Time, the weekend we “fall back” by turning our clocks back one hour. In essence, we are given an extra hour. This brings up a question: Why not do something special with that extra hour?...
Hope for Hope
Sociologists and culture experts have observed that we live in an era of rampant depression and anxiety, particularly among the teen generation. Would you agree with this observation? If so, what do you think is driving this depressed state? Take a minute to jot down...
Share Faith the Philip Way
As the book of Acts opens, God is growing His church by the thousands over a period of just a few days. This creates some logistical problems for the apostles, so they decide to recruit seven helpers—people who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. One of...
What’s the Plan?
Quick Backdrop Has this ever happened to you? You do something bad. Your parents say, “If you do that again you will be in trouble.” Then you do it again. And your parents say, “If you do that again you will be in trouble.” And you do it again. Still no trouble. Your...
Own Our Own: Growing Up in Faith
As we grow up, we experience things that tell us we are doing just that—growing up. Harder school classes, more homework, driver’s license, weekend freedom and more responsibility. We have one more to add: taking ownership of our faith. Growing up in our faith...
Spiritual Momentum
Think about the last time you started something but didn’t finish. What made you start? When we’re excited about starting something new, it’s easy at first. But as we know, new things get old and it becomes harder to keep up the momentum. Faith is a lot like this....