kingdom

“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise” (James 5:13). In Psalm 100, the psalmist instructs us: “Shout for joy to the Lord, . . . Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. . . . Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (v.1-2, 4-5). What is it about praise and thanksgiving that brings the Lord and the believer so close together? Praise melts our hearts so that we are no longer hardened by sin or disappointment. The Bible teaches that God is near to those who praise Him (see Psalm 145:18-19). He knows the deepest concerns of our hearts (see Psalm 139). And while He never requires our praise, He certainly desires it because He knows that praise […]

“On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, . . .” (1 Corinthians 16:2). Read 1 Corinthians 16:1-4. Jesus often taught on the subject of money. In His Sermon on the Mount, He said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, . . . But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20). Brothers and sisters, what you give to the Lord will always bear dividends—here and now, and ultimately for all eternity. At the end of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses the subject of giving. At first this seems a strange place to bring it up. He moves immediately from the triumph of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 to the triumph of the collection plate in 1 Corinthians 16. But when we understand that our giving is an extension of our faith […]

“Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-28. When the first crop of the season ripens, it’s an exciting day for a farmer. The farmer has diligently prepared the fields, sown the seeds, and tended the seedlings. If the firstfruits are good, then the farmer can have confidence that the rest of the harvest will be good as well. On Easter morning, Jesus became the firstfruits of a much greater harvest. His body had been sown like a seed, but it was then raised new, glorious, and indestructible. What is true of the firstfruits will be true of all who trust in the name of Jesus: One day, all the dead in Christ will be raised to new life in Him. The Corinthian Christians believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but they weren’t so sure […]

“The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes” (Psalm 19:8).  Read Psalm 19:7-9. Psalm 19:7-8 tells us the Word of God “is perfect, refreshing the soul, . . . making wise the simple. . . . giving joy to the heart. . . . giving light to the eyes.” That is the power of the Scriptures. The Bible can lift a person out of the degradation of sin, from prostitution and drunkenness, slavery and addiction, greed and self-righteousness, to a victorious life in Jesus Christ. Here’s a famous example: The Word of God transformed the life of a slave trader named John Newton, and he became a preacher of the Gospel and a hymn writer. Newton wrote many songs in his day, but we remember one in particular because it’s his testimony set to music, illustrating the power of the Word of God: “Amazing […]

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:8).  Read Isaiah 40:6-8. Today, no matter how hard someone might try, it would be nearly impossible to scrub the Scriptures from existence. But this was not always the case. Up until the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the Bible was preserved through the extremely meticulous, labor-intensive, and time-consuming process of copying it by hand. To hear the Bible read aloud in a public gathering was a tremendous privilege; to own a personal copy of the Scriptures was a luxury reserved for the super-rich. From its earliest days, the Bible has been subjected to the most intense hatred of any book in human history. It’s been despised by despots and dictators, many of whom outlawed the Bible. Some tried to destroy the Bible through clever arguments, others by force. Some passed laws and made it a capital punishment for anyone […]

“For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Read 2 Peter 1:19-21. The Bible is a special book because it is filled with the very words of God, not merely the wisdom of human beings. Is it any surprise, then, that the Bible is filled with prophecies, many of which have already come true and affirm the trustworthiness of Scripture? Way back in the book of Genesis, God told Abraham, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there” (Genesis 15:13). Guess how long the Israelites were in Egypt. Four hundred years, just as God declared. And then there was Daniel, who interpreted a dream that, from his place in time, described the next five hundred years. Daniel even saw […]

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).  Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17. More than two thousand times in the Bible’s pages, we read, “Thus says the Lord.” The Bible testifies to its truthfulness by appealing to its divine Author. The Bible contains sixty-six different books written over a span of about sixteen hundred years. These sixty-six books were written by forty different writers, and the backgrounds of these writers vary tremendously. There were doctors and shepherds, prophets and kings, statesmen and lawyers, priests and tax collectors, tentmakers and fishermen. As you would expect, these people held various opinions and worldviews, especially when you consider they wrote over such a vast time period. And yet, together they produced a unified book—unified in doctrine, ethics, and vision. It’s actually mind-boggling when you think about it. So many people […]

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18).  Read Matthew 5:17-19. There’s one whose authority far surpasses even the most distinguished and celebrated academic. Jesus Christ—God of very God, who existed from before eternity—was an eyewitness to all the events that took place in the Old Testament. He was there at creation. In fact, it was through Him that all things were created. And when He lived among us, when He walked the streets of ancient Israel, He affirmed that the Bible is the very Word of God. As the Son of God, Jesus has perfect integrity—even non-Christians agree on the blazing integrity of Jesus—and yet He never said, “Well, you know the story of Noah and the flood? Well, that’s just an allegory.” He never said, “Jonah and the whale? Well, that […]

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Have you ever noticed that when you are ready to pray, the phone rings or somebody knocks on your door? How often is your prayer time disturbed by things on your to-do list, with daydreams, or with sleepiness? Prayer is the most important thing we can do as believers. Through prayer, we communicate with our heavenly Father. We also learn more about Him when we pray. We grow in our faith through prayer. When we pray, we find the encouragement, the strength, and the power we need to face life. Satan, however, seeks to interfere with the sacred intimacy of prayer. He did not want Adam and Eve to communicate with God in the Garden of Eden, nor does Satan want us to communicate with God. Rather, he seeks to find ways of making us spiritually weak. He knows that prayer is our vital source of power and […]