Prayer is hard to understand. It only works because a merciful God wills it to work. How can God be sovereign and yet open to our suggestions? But God invites (commands?) his people to pray. He is hurt by our distance and preoccupation with other things. He wants us to ask things of him. Few […]
Things went downhill fast after the serpent deceived our first parents in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve failed to trust the goodness of God and embraced a culture of death. Sin can cause even our best gifts and worship to be tarnished (Isaiah 1:12-15; 64:6). No one found that out more than Cain, the first […]
Perhaps you’ve heard the advice, “Buy what you’re selling.” You wouldn’t expect a Ford salesman to drive a Chevy. On the threshold of a new year Christians may well want to ask, “If we are not convinced that Christ fulfilled prophecy (last week’s lesson) and also rose from the dead, will a watching world believe […]
One evidence that the Bible is divine is the record of fulfilled predictive prophecies. The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by at least 40 different human writers. The evidence of fulfilled prophecy is extremely faith building. For instance, reading Psalm 22 (written 1,000 years before Christ) and Isaiah 52:13—53:12 (written 700 […]
The ultimate objective of preaching and teaching is not just conveying information. It is achieving transformation (Andy Stanley, Communicating for a Change). Believers often know more Bible than they are living. If anyone needed a transformation of his whole life it was Zacchaeus of Jericho. The story of the transformation of Zacchaeus could be a […]
