In Matt 6:19-21 the Lord commanded those who believe in Him to lay up treasure in heaven. But he didn’t just give the command. He explained why it makes a lot of sense for us to obey this command. Remember the reason? Moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal treasure laid up

A Roman Catholic once told me he believed that salvation was by grace, because doing good works is only possible because God makes it possible. God is the ground of our being. So even though works are part of the condition of salvation, salvation is by “grace” because the fact that we exist at all

Many well-meaning Christians are not well taught on this supremely important and practical subject. A common phrase heard in Christendom (and sadly even by supposedly evangelical Christians) is “I’m a Christian, but I’m no saint.” The idea is that while we can expect a person to go to church, give money, and keep away from

On Sunday, February 27, 2017 I completed my sixth marathon. It was the Cowtown Marathon in Fort Worth. 26.2 miles. I completed my first in 1998. I racewalk. Due to hip and knee issues, I can’t run very far without joint problems. But still it is challenging to go that far in under the time

Have you ever heard of a “Word fast”? It’s when you cut out TV, movies, newspapers, radio, and every other kind of teaching from your life, and just read the Word of God. In other words, you fast from eating up the world’s message, and feast on God’s message. I used to waste far too

originally published in the November/December 1998 edition of Grace in Focus Luke 15 is the classic NT chapter on repentance. Here, if anywhere, we should meet the fundamental teaching on NT repentance. As we saw in our study of Luke 15:1-10 (last issue), the first two parables of the chapter—The Lost Sheep and The Lost

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,

Today I received an email from a friend. He gave me a link to an article entitled, “When Assurance of Salvation Is Fleeting.”[i] It was a Feb 15, 2017 blog at The Gospel Coalition (TGC) by a man named Jason Helopoulos. The first two headings of the blog give you a good idea of the

Today, the society we live in is bombarded with polling data as if to prove that the majority is always right. Often, the polling data in elections doesn’t accurately predict the outcome. The polling data can be wrong! The majority of the pollsters can be wrong! Even in technical areas like science or medicine, the

Imagine someone came to you and said you could be saved if you bench pressed 750 lbs, but you only had one chance to do it. Could you? You might try, but I doubt most of you could even lift the bar off the handles. Now imagine if they came back to you and made