Lead Story

COVER STORY – CHRISTMAS

The sight, smell, and sounds of a little baby give no reason for fear. Quite the opposite; watching a sleeping baby can overwhelm one’s heart with comfort, contentment, and joy. The world’s noise, wickedness, and danger all fade away when one is gently rocking in a chair while cradling a baby.
Joseph and Mary experienced the love that saturates parents’ hearts, but God was giving even more. The difficulties of life in the world may very well have faded into the background while baby Jesus was cooing and Mary was swaddling Him, but Jesus was born for much more than baby-joy. Jesus was born to defeat sorrow and to conquer its source, sin.
The words most frequently repeated throughout the account of Jesus’ birth are, “fear not,” or more literally, “stop being afraid.”
These words always come from God, either directly or through His messenger—an angel. Every time these words are spoken, Jesus and His work are the antidote for fear.
When the angel Gabriel appeared to Zacharias, he said, “Stop being afraid.” Why? Because God would give Zacharias a son who would be the forerunner of the Savior. He would “. . . make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17) Zacharias and Elizabeth had been praying and waiting for a child for decades, but Israel had been praying and waiting for the Messiah for millennia. The time was full, the Savior was coming—stop being afraid.
Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, “Stop being afraid.” Why? “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.” (Luke 1:31) Jesus means “Savior.” Stop being afraid, the long-promised Savior is coming to pay the ransom for your sins.Read More »Stop Being Afraid

COVER STORY – THE REFORMATION

Recently I came across the name of yet another Christian denomination that was new to me. I now don’t even recall what it was, but that led me to wonder just how many Christian denominations exist today. I was astounded by the answer. According to the two-volume World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett, Kurian, and Johnson; Oxford University Press, 2001) there are over 33,000: “World Christianity consists of six major ecclesiastico-cultural blocs, divided into 300 major ecclesiastical traditions, composed of over 33,000 distinct denominations in 238 countries.” (Vol. I, p. 16).
Nor is this a declining trend. In the eighteen years since that book was published, the number of denominations has reportedly grown significantly. Although the supposition that there are over 33,000 Christian denominations is based in large part on the definition of “denomination” (a definition that is about as hard to pin down as a peeled grape) one fact is clear: Christians today have no trouble separating from others and forming themselves into autonomous groups.
It wasn’t always so. Other than the “Great Schism” of 1054 between eastern and western Catholicism, the Christian church saw no substantive division until the Lutheran Reformation of 1517. Prior to the Reformation, in other words, if someone claimed to be Christian it meant that he was either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox (which, in reality, were just twin sons of a different father). There were some splinter groups during the 1,500 years prior to the Reformation, but such groups were routinely condemned as heretical and mercilessly crushed. The wall that enclosed “the Christian church” was broken by the Reformation, and once the outflow began, the exodus was stunning. In just seventeen years (by 1534) Christian could mean Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Calvinist, Zwinglian, or any one of their ever-growing number of offshoots. Rome has been trying to reverse the flow ever since.Read More »The Goal Was Unity, Not Division

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband
is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church. . . .
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for
her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. . . .
This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
(Ephesians 5:22-23,26,32)

If you were asked to give a definition for the word love, how would you answer? I suppose it depends on the kind of love you’re thinking about. There are different forms of love. If you’re a parent you might define love as the feeling of deep affection you have for your child (“I love my son to death”). If you’re engaged, you might define it as the romantic attachment you have for your sweetheart (“It was love at first sight”). If you’re a football enthusiast it may mean the great interest and pleasure you have in watching your team play (“I love the Seahawks”).
If you are a Bible student, you may be aware that Greek, the original language of the New Testament, has several distinct words for love. The Greek word eros doesn’t occur in the Bible; it is used in reference to the love of sexual attraction. Philia is the love shared by friends. Then there’s agape (uh-GAHP-ay), the highest and most important form of love. A key characteristic of agape is the willingness to put the welfare/happiness/comfort of others before your own. Agape has been defined as love that decides to do what is in someone else’s best interests no matter what, even when that person doesn’t deserve it.Read More »The Mystery of Marital Love

COVER STORY – PENTECOST

Our lives are constantly changing. Occasionally, those changes feel life-shattering. We move, change jobs, get sick, or lose a friend or family member; the list could go on. We wonder how we can continue, but God knows that His plan for us is not broken. God picks up the pieces of our broken lives and makes us His new creation. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
Consider the life of Jacob. He fled his home after deceiving his father, fearing that Esau would kill him. He saw firsthand the kind of healing that God is capable of when he returned to his homeland and was met by his brother’s embrace (Genesis 33:4). He had faced adversity of many kinds and had been blessed by God with twelve sons; then he was told that his beloved son Joseph was dead. “And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, ‘For I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning.’ Thus his father wept for him.” (Genesis 37:35) His life was broken in a way that no human comfort could mend.
God’s plan was bigger than Jacob understood. He used Joseph to help prepare for a seven-year famine. But God didn’t care only about the big picture. He knew the pain that Jacob was living with and healed him by reuniting him with his son. “Then Israel said, ‘It is enough. Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.’” (Genesis 45:28) Read More »God Has a Plan for You

“Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  

(Romans 6:3-4)

Baptists and others like to ask, “When where you saved?” They like to be able to point to a specific time and experience when they “accepted” Christ and committed themselves to follow Him. A friend in Northern Ireland recently gave me a good response to that question. When he is asked, “When were you saved?” he responds, “About two thousand years ago.”

We were not saved by some decision we made or by committing our life to Christ. We were saved by Christ’s death and resurrection alone. When Christ died, we died. Jesus bore all the pain, suffering and shame of our death for us, and by faith we have received all the benefits of His death. So when we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, we are also celebrating our own resurrection.

Now we have a totally new and glorious life. We died to sin. We died to the Law. Now we live with and for Christ. We have been raised with Him to “walk in newness of life.” It is a glorious, joyful life with God.

We cannot describe that new life any better than God Himself did when He inspired Paul to write Colossians 3:1-17. Read these words slowly, thinking of how this is your new life, for you are risen with Christ.Read More »Risen with Christ!