Job 14:1 states, “Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” In short, life is the quickest of quandaries. A year, a decade, a century, and it’s gone.  Life is a gift, be sure, but it requires guts, grit, and a lot of grace to get through it.  Adversity is part of the journey, and adversity for the believer is often how God chooses to manifest His grace.  As Jerry Bridges said, “God uses adversity to loosen our grip on those things that are not true fruit.”  Loosening the grip leads to joy and …

According to Webster’s dictionary, the definition of the word Cannibal is as follows: a person who eats the flesh of human beings or an animal that eats its own kind.* “Eating your own kind” may seem like a good survival strategy in dire circumstances, but over the long haul, such an approach to living results in extinction. In the cannibalistic culture, eventually there is no one left to devour but yourself.

Devour.  It is a word used by the apostle Paul to describe the legalism that infiltrated the churches of Galatia.  He said it like this, “But if ye bite …

In his book, Paths to Power, A.W. Tozer commented on the spiritual condition of the church, “To any casual observer of the religious scene today, two things will at once be evident: one, that there is very little sense of sin among the unsaved, and two, that the average professed Christian lives a life so worldly and careless that it is difficult to distinguish him from the unconverted man.” This statement was published in the 1940’s…I wonder what Tozer would think of the church in this new millennium?

The truth is, what really matters is what God thinks. I …

The preacher of God’s Word spends much of his time in preparation for the preaching hour. He studies, he prays, he searches, he digs out, he anticipates, he practices, he meditates, he even dreams about the moment when Sunday comes and he mounts the pulpit with the Bible in his hand. But on occasion, the preacher should walk away from the pulpit and sit on the pew. I do not mean he shouldn’t attempt to preach, I just mean that he should try listening to himself from time to time with his audience.

We, as preachers, are so engrossed with …

What happens when your preacher preaches? I know…that’s a loaded question. I guess I should state it this way: Are you aware of what takes places when the pastor gets up to expound Scripture?  More than likely, you are cognizant of certain elements surrounding the preaching hour.  The pastor takes the congregation to a particular passage. He probably gives some sort of title or subject matter. He typically delivers his message in a familiar outline or framework.  He usually preaches a certain length of time. He does this and he does that. You know the nuance of his voice, the …