If you’re looking for a sweet, clean, romantic escape from today’s craziness, let me take you back to 1996, a trip to the Ohio State Fair included. Note the Christian content is light but shiny. Short blurb: In 1996, a boy shy loner pranks the arrogant young heir apparent to her favorite campgrounds by pretending she’s a spunky country girl, only he’s not what he seems to be either and God himself appears to be setting them up. Ebook available online from all major ebook stores. Print edition coming to Amazon soon. Free digital copies are available for reviewers upon request. Crack! It’s 1996, andRead More →

Part One I have little patience for debates over inconsequential matters. Too many debates on the Internet come down to questions with all the relevance of, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” At first blush, the question of whether we need to thank God for everything or in everything seems to be nitpicking about a single word. As I wrote in the previous article, we are called to thank God in every circumstance but not necessarily to thank him for literally everything that happens to us. The difference between the two is far from trivial. There are four pastoral and/orRead More →

By Adam Graham Thankfulness is important.  We recently celebrated Thanksgiving in the United States. We have much to be thankful for, particularly those of us living in the United States. We are clothed, housed, and well-fed, with luxuries that many kings would not dream of. Yet, there’s a trendy teaching that we need to be thankful for all things, including bad things. Yes, if we accept this, if our mothers have passed away, we must thank God that our mothers have died. One source of this teaching is Sarah Young’s popular devotional Jesus Calling. She writes her devotional as if Jesus himself is talking toRead More →

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32) Christianity is more than a mere list of dos and don’ts. God does have boundaries, and we do reap the consequences of our actions here on earth. But when we become wrathful, angry, bitter, and slanderous in how we respond to the mote in our brother’s eye, we need to get the beam out of our own, because those are the works of the flesh and as poisonous to us as what we are attempting to correct in others–in some cases, more so even. Let our kindness andRead More →

Modern Christian music sometimes gets criticized as mostly shallow, “Jesus is my boyfriend” love songs. And some are. Yet I turn on Pandora and set it to shuffle through my Christian stations and I easily find music that feeds the soul, lifts me up out of funks, calms fear and anxiety, and reminds me of eternal truth. For example: While “Dreaming Jacob’s Dream” with Michael Card, he encourages me, “We all need dreams to seek Him.” We adore the eternal holy one who sits on Heaven’s Mercy seat in “Revelation Song” with Philips, Craig and Dean. “In Christ Alone” reminds me “Up from the graveRead More →