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The longer you live, the more it becomes evident in your life that we are all heading in either one direction or the other. Either we're becoming more like Christ, or we become more like our sin. If we are not regenerate and being sanctified, our sin and its conditions slowly take over until we become nothing but a caricature, a perverse exaggeration of the evil that was in our hearts. When you get old, whatever it was that you hung your hat on, you become that thing. As your higher intellectual functions shut down, you lose more and more of your common decency. And that's when your sin emerges. Whatever greed, pride, lust, malice, envy, hatred, discord, jealousy, selfish ambition, or bitterness you had before, you become consumed by it until it becomes all that you are. All that's left of you is that condition. My landlady told me of an old woman that her daughter (who works in a nursing home) knew. She was so frail that she could not feed herself, yet she was so proud t...

A little over two months ago, I started a Word Document that I titled, "On Church Planting". In it I've been recording little nuggets of insights as they come to me related to church planting. As GracePoint starts a church service in a new suburb, there have been myriad little things that I've been thinking about that I want to remember if I ever get a chance to plant a church. Here is one that I wrote recently that I would like to subject to the review of others for sound doctrine and faithfulness. In my church, I will not have FCG or Extreme*. I do not want to create a specific, targeted ministry. I believe that the gospel is relevant to all people and for all people. Moreover, it unites all people, no matter the diversity. “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit”. I am convinced that God meant for his churches to d...

It occurred me last night that teasing discourages godly relationships. At times. Not all the time. But quite often. Especially with those who already have trust issues and difficulty opening up and seeking godly counsel, whether from a peer or from a mentor. This is tricky because, under certain other conditions, teasing also strengthens and affirms friendships. There is a delicate balance between the benevolent belittling you find between good friends and the hurtful harassment of a one-sided relationship. Teasing And Godly Counsel Why is it so hard for some people to open up? Because as sinners, we all have things to hide; sinful things, shameful acts of evil, things we do that we're afraid to admit to others. For us, the command to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them” (Eph 5.11) terrifies us! But some people do take that step. At some point in every young Christian's life, there is a realization that for growth and maturity to...