But there’s one thing you can be sure of: you will be tested. New believers and mature believers alike need to understand, contrary to what popular books tell us, that the Christian life is not without pain, difficulty, and suffering. Read more...

God reveals truth through our conscience. We can distinguish the good from evil because we have a moral sense bred into us. This is what Paul meant when he said humans both obey God’s law and know themselves in violation of it by virtue of the law ‘written on their hearts.’

What we choose really does matter. If we live in an exclusively material world, human life – including yours and mine – is absolutely meaningless. No matter how intense our passions, how great our accomplishments, or what side of history we choose, all of this will turn to dust in a universe doomed to extinction.

When we say that God is ‘personal,’ we mean, at the very least, that He is rational, purposeful, self-conscious, and, above all, that He communicates. The loving God of Christianity reveals not only His own character but how He wants humankind to live in creation.

We call the core beliefs that have united Christians through the ages orthodoxy, or “right belief.” Understanding the faith, once entrusted for all, is critically important today, for we live in a time…when Christians and the civilization they helped to build are under assault.

Only a creative reason, or Logos, does justice to our experience of the world. Further, only a Logos that is both unimaginatively creative and loving accounts for our delight in the world. When we see the Logos as the source of creation and yet independent of it, when we reflect on the world’s beauty and our own freedom, the Logos quickly assumes the character of the personal God

“Jesus broke into society with a radical, transforming message. In His first sermon He announced that He had come to set the captives free, to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18). It was more than just the good news of salvation.
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The task of this generation – as it will be in every generation – is to understand Christianity as a complete view of the world and humankind’s place in it, that is, as the truth. If Christianity is not the truth, it is nothing, and our faith mere sentimentality.

When believers are revived, and our churches are renewed in mission and oneness, the world will see fruit to cause it to awaken to the Gospel.

We are known by our fruits (Matthew 7:16). But this is where it gets costly to believe, for true Christianity is countercultural. It means death to self, giving up self-control – and personal autonomy, as we know, is the thing postmodern thought prizes more than anything else. True faith means . . .