True repentance and faith brings true cost and true joy, for both the convert and for the evangelist.
Paul understood the culture, connected it to the Gospel, and spoke boldly. We should, too.
Matthew begins to follow Jesus and immediately invites his friends to meet him.
Jesus was with people who needed Him and perfectly balanced grace and truth.
God disciplines us because He loves us. Through discipline, we are given the strength to endure to the end and to grow in the "peaceful fruit of righteousness."
For the Christian, the race we run has Jesus as the focal point and joy as the reward.
Faith means thanking God in triumphs and trusting God in tragedies, and in all circumstances looking to the "better resurrection" promised to those in Christ.
We are saved by grace, not by respectability or external markers of decency or balancing the ledger of good deeds over bad. Faith is the response to grace which is…
Sometimes having faith means doing things which make very little practical or strategic sense, but are nonetheless exactly what God commands us to do, and what God is pleased to…