He is my Song

I recently read back through 1 and 2 Peter, and three words kept standing out to me: hardship, holiness, and heresy. My husband always calls 1 Peter the SOP (standard operating procedure) for the Christian, and the longer I thought about it, the more I agreed with him. It's practical, it's direct, and it tells you how the Christian life should operate. In Peter's first letter, the believers were being slandered and suffering for the name of Christ. In the second letter, the bigger danger was false teachers slipping into their churches, promising freedom and scoffing at the idea that Jesus was coming back to judge anyone. In other words: live however you want, because there’s no reckoning.  Suffering tempts you to give up . False freedom tempts you to give in. Peter answers both the same way: know the truth, live a holy life, and be willing to suffer for it. Hardship, holiness, and heresy aren’t three separate topics in these letters. Hardship presses from outside, heresy c...

Before the "ber" months even hit the calendar, "Starbies" starts selling their PSLs in 98-degree heat. We're all dying to pull out our sweaters, but all we can do is mop up our sweat. And right on schedule, out come the Halloween arguments in the comment sections. It's pagan! No, it's Christian! Samhain! All Hallows' Eve! Souling! Somebody always has a meme, and somebody always has a history lesson. Here's the thing: I don't care where it came from. I really don't. Whatever October 31st meant a thousand years ago doesn't matter. I don't live in 1026. I live in 2026. So the question I have to answer as a follower of Jesus isn't "Where did this come from?" It's "What is this today, and do I want any part of it?" When I look honestly at what Halloween is today, my answer is NO .  So for anybody who's ever wondered where I stand, here it is, once and for all. What Halloween Is Now Walk into any store o...

When it comes to the devil, believers tend to land in one of two ditches. Some act like he doesn’t really exist, like he’s a cartoon with horns and a pitchfork that grown-ups outgrow. Others see him behind every flat tire and bad hair day, and give him far more credit than he deserves. Both ditches are dangerous, and Scripture keeps us out of both. In Ephesians 2:1–3, Paul names three enemies that once held us captive: the world, the flesh, and the devil. We’ve already looked at what it means to overcome the world , the pressure from outside, and the flesh , the battle inside. Now we turn to the enemy who works through both. A Defeated Enemy So where does Scripture put the devil? Paul tells us exactly where he stands after the cross:  “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). Now that picture might go right over our heads today, but Paul's readers would have known exactly what he meant. For us to u...