The Christian Life
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26) If you worship with LifePoint often, you are keenly familiar with these words. They constitute the blessing—or the benediction—by which we conclude our worship gatherings. Yet, by nature, this familiarity carries with it an inherent danger. Things with which we are most familiar can most easily be taken for granted—or worse, easily ignored. Therefore, we need to re-expose our hearts to the potency of this
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September 12, 2018 // 0 Comments
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12–13) How we approach God’s Word is the difference between growing and remaining stagnant in the Christian life. I doubt that anyone taking time to read this post has trouble affirming that the Bible plays a vital role in the life of a believer. Yet I
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August 29, 2018 // 0 Comments
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3) John’s words provide important insight into the nature of Christian obedience. As missionary and martyr Jim Elliot once wrote, “Commandment-keeping is terribly laborious when it doesn’t spring from an eager . . . heart.” From where does this eagerness of heart come? It comes from God alone. To be eager to obey Him, we must love Him, which means that we first need new hearts, for the human heart, in its natural state, cannot possibly love God (Ez. 36:26). Thus
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August 22, 2018 // 0 Comments
The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. (Numbers 6:25) Author James Bryan Smith, sharing his testimony, talks about how he used to view God before coming to a true knowledge of His love: “For years I related to God as if He sat in a swivel chair. When I did something good, God would look at me and smile. When I did something bad, God would turn His back to me until I made amends, when He would swivel back and accept me again. I kept God constantly on the move.” Smith’s testimony is something most—if not all—of us can relate to in some way or
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August 15, 2018 // 0 Comments
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:16) In John 1:45, Philip tells Nathaniel, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth.” For an Israelite at the time, this would’ve come as a surprise—”the world’s Messiah is from where now? Nazareth? Of all places?” You see, Nazareth wasn’t exactly a desirable place to live. It was about as podunk as you could get, hence Nathaniel’s snobbish response: “Can anything good come
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August 8, 2018 // 0 Comments
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) In Scripture, God occasionally allows us a peak behind the curtain of this material world to see how He is worshiped in heaven. One can’t help but marvel while reading such accounts—Isaiah’s vision in the temple, Ezekiel’s calling at the Chebar Canal, John’s encounter with Jesus while in captivity on the island Patmos. These men experienced heaven and their lives were forever transformed as a result. Indeed, these passages cause us to long for the bright future that awaits
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August 1, 2018 // 0 Comments
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. (1 John 4:16a) “You are loved.” If you worship with LifePoint regularly, you’re not unaccustomed to hearing those three words. They’re spoken over you every week. They’re the punctuation mark of our worship gatherings. But how do we know those words are true? How do we know that God loves us? The apostle John says it’s because we “confess that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 4:15). Whoever makes that confession by faith, “God abides in him, and he in God.” And
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June 20, 2018 // 0 Comments
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh…” (2 Corinthians 5:14–16a) When we truly experience God’s love, we are transformed into willing servants. Jesus frees us to love and serve others rather than regarding them according to the flesh. That’s what defined the apostle Paul’s life.
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June 13, 2018 // 0 Comments
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3) As fallen people, we all experience the brokenness that sin has brought to bear upon the world. It manifests itself in countless ways. Some people sense it in an unspoken resentment that has strained their relationship with their spouse. Others in the remembrance of a painful childhood experience. Still, others in a constant search for approval and validation from those around them. However brokenness might show itself, it is our tendency to want to avoid the places in our lives where we most need healing. We
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June 6, 2018 // 0 Comments
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:1, 19–20) God’s opinion of you is not necessarily the same as your opinion of yourself. This is one of the hardest things for us to learn. Until we do, we are going to be ruled by our self-opinions. Most of the time, we tend toward smugness or despair in our view of ourselves. In the case of
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May 30, 2018 // 0 Comments
