On a scale from one to ten, how joyful are you?  I would like for you to really give an answer.  Go ahead; assign a numerical value to the question.  Ponder it for a few moments.  Make an honest assessment of the joy in your life, and place the number somewhere in your heart.

I am not really interested in what it is as much as why it is.  Why is it a 7, or a 4, or a 10?  How is joy constituted in your life?  Is your joy the result of money, security, friends, or position?  Are you …

Recently a friend of ours bought us tickets to hear Handel’s Messiah at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I have lived near Atlanta all my life, I am familiar with the content and Scriptures of the masterpiece, and I even have an appreciation for such music. But this was the first time I heard the oratorio in person.  As Henry Suso said, “It is one thing to hear for yourself a sweet lute, sweetly played, and quite another thing to merely hear about it.”

Hearing and Hearing About

I suppose the superficiality that fills the church is rooted in the same …

What makes a good drama?  What elements and components must be in place to mesmerize and capture the attention of a particular audience?  Well, if you think about it, most dramas have specific items in common:

A good drama has to have an embellished storyline.  Most movies that are “based upon a true story” are just that, “based upon.”  Directors and writers realize that most people want more than the truth, they want a particular interpretation of the truth.  And so, a drama typically has parts and parcels of reality, but is otherwise intertwined with overhyped and exaggerated views …

There are three things we need to pursue every single day in order to live with righteous conduct: God’s will, God’s glory, and God’s holiness. Before you write these things off as spiritual impossibilities, consider a few things.

Seeking God’s Will.

How can we know the will of God?  Knowing God’s will is the same thing as knowing God’s Word.  It is true, if we do not know what God has said, we will never be able to live as God intends.  But we have His Word recorded in 66 books. The only way to live with righteous intentions is …

If you have taken the time to read any of my posts this year, I would like to personally thank you.  The intention of this blog is to present biblically-minded principles in a practical, ministry-based format.  Our site-statistics manager has logged the top ten posts over the past year, and I would like to share those posts with you in the order of their popularity.

As I studied and reviewed the statistics,  I found that most of you are interested in articles and thoughts concerning church ministry and personal spiritual formation.  That is interesting to me because those are the …