The Holy Spirit is that companion present and available who wants to empower us to live in the Kingdom of God. Whatever you do, don’t move forward alone.

Trying to live life in the Kingdom of God without the Holy Spirit is like trying to drive a car without gas. You won’t get very far! We need the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes it can seem like the world around us is crumbling down, but let’s not miss all the surprising ways God is at work right in front of us.

The story of Lazarus isn’t just about one resurrection but multiple resurrections. As we prepare to celebrate Easter this coming weekend, perhaps you, too, are in need of a resurrection?

Fear is a powerful emotion. And yet it can be so subtle that sometimes we don’t even realize we are carrying it. I think a lot of us are walking around more scared than we realize.

Most of us associate Advent with Christmas. We celebrate the baby born into our world, who would be our Savior. But Advent is also our present season. We live in a time of Advent. 

Self-awareness is tricky. It can be elusive and hard to receive clearly. However, I think there is a gem for us to discover about self-awareness from one of the quirkiest characters in the Bible.

From the time I was a kid, I’ve heard about the rapture. But is this idea of Christians being snatched away from the earth really Biblical?

I wonder what ideas you hold about heaven and eternal life. For many of us, our ideas of the afterlife are absorbed from popular culture and well-meaning people. But are those ideas true?

I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older that I start weighing sweets by the criteria: “Is it worth it?” Not everything satisfies. If only we’d learn to live by this discernment in every area of our lives.

We’ve gotten so off-track the past few years. It’s time to recenter ourselves on King Jesus and what it means to live as his Kingdom Community.

Indifference plays an important role in the life of a Christ-follower. Without indifference, the likelihood of charting a course that is out of step with the Spirit increases.

As followers of Jesus, if our political arguments sound no different than typical Democratic or Republican rhetoric, we need to step back and open ourselves up to the possibility that we may have lost sight of the Kingdom.

During the course of my life, the dominant message I’ve heard proclaimed about Christianity centers on belief not behavior.

“Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?”
“Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?”
“Do you believe that Jesus rose again?”

When these beliefs are assented to, we say that the person has “crossed the line of faith” and is now a follower of Jesus. Is that really all there is to it?

I would venture to say that in today’s climate, unless you are actively trying to do otherwise, by default you will get sucked into an “us versus them” mindset. We’re all swimming in it. It dominates the media we consume, including Christian programming and publications. We fight for “us” and denounce “them.” It’s a war out there. There’s just one problem.

Jesus isn’t playing.

This coming weekend, we will celebrate Easter. I think sometimes we see Easter as the ending of a three act play that started in the gutter of Good Friday, lost the plot during an uneventful Saturday, but culminated in a surprising twist that “Christ is Risen!” That is the story, but the ending is actually the beginning. 

Too often, I think we see our lives as if we’re still living on the Holy Saturday of Easter weekend. We stumble around because we have lost the plot. We forget that the climax of the story already happened, and we are living in the ending, which is really the beginning. 

That’s why it is so important to celebrate Easter every year. It reminds us of where we are in the story.

In the middle of all the divisiveness and polarization in our world, it’s really hard not to get sucked into an “us versus them” mentality.

And before we know it, we’re engaged in the very behavior Jesus and the New Testament writers warned us against: judging one another.

This post is a reminder to myself (and maybe you): “Who are you to judge?”

For the past couple of years, life has felt like a series of storms.

I’m quite certain you feel it too. Many of these storms have been shared experiences. Covid. Racial strife. Political polarization. And now, the war in Ukraine.

And yet, many of us are also facing distinctively personal storms. 

I’m not sure what storm you are facing, but I’d like to share the best advice I know for what to do in the middle of a storm.

The “greater righteousness” Jesus calls us to is a whole-person way of being in the world that conforms to God’s will. It’s not just about doing the right things; it’s about having the right heart…a Kingdom heart.

What is a Kingdom heart? And how do we cultivate it?

Let’s lean in once again to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Righteous is not something most of us aspire to be. In fact, when we hear the word, we often think of self-righteous, of people who act like they are morally superior.

And yet, righteousness is at the heart of what Jesus calls us to in his Sermon on the Mount. Righteousness is at the heart of Jesus’ kingdom vision.

So what does it mean to be righteous?