The essence of the covenant promise of God throughout the bible is God’s promise that “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” The Old Covenant was faulty in that it couldn’t bring that reality about, but could only point towards Jesus. Jesus, as a greater priest, brings greater covenant promises than…

Imagine arriving to your hotel, late at night, ready to check in and go to sleep, only to find that the lobby was shut and locked. What good is a hotel with a closed lobby, such that you can’t gain access to what you need? The priests of the Old Testament were mortal men who died,…

Many Christians live their lives believing that their salvation is all up to them – and, that they can lose it. Instead of having security and confidence, we can live life like a tightrope walker in the circus, taking each step ever so slightly, thinking that if we take one wrong step, we are lost and gone and perish irredeemably. As…

There is a natural drive in us to want to mature – we want to grow up. But, it is possible to become content with immaturity. It is possible to become content with where we are, until we are confronted with our immaturity and awakened to our need of change. Unfortunately, in our culture today, immaturity is often met…

Jesus knows what it means to suffer.  If you have suffered in this life, if you know what it’s like to cry, to shed tears, to experience pain and grief, and if you know what it means to obey God even when it is costly, then you can take comfort in knowing that Jesus, your…

There’s a common, but false, idea out there which thinks that “Normal” in the Christian life is a life of ease – that it is a life of uninterrupted smooth sailing, such that if trials and difficulties comes, if failure or struggle comes, if hardship comes, then something’s wrong … “Normal” has been interrupted, and so we assume…

When someone is important to you, their words will be important to you.  How you listen to somebody reveals in some degree how important that person is to you.  The Bible is God’s Word.  It is God speaking to you.  How you respond to His Word, the Bible, is how you respond to God Himself.

Rebecca Pippert recounts the story of one individual coming to faith in Christ, where it required the individual to become homeless, to flee the environment she was currently in.  To Pippert’s surprise, the next day she observed the woman, suitcase in hand, a smile on her face, and tears in her eyes. This is a…

Chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews are written to Christians who are experiencing the lows of life, who are profoundly experiencing what it is like to live in a fallen, broken, sin-filled world.  These chapters teach us to not despair, even in the lows, because our ultimate hope is not in this life.  It is…

In the 19th century, a Catholic priest, Father Damien, was known as the apostle to the lepers.  Leprosy was a problem in Hawaii at the time, and in order to prevent it’s spread, lepers were quarantined in a remote place, with little assistance from the outside world.   Realizing it was a death sentence, the Catholic…