I pulled out one of her drawers to begin organizing. Menial tasks can have such gospel implication when done through the law of love. After I separated the pens in the junk drawer, I opened her day planner from 2017. She could still write then. Her handwriting, a memento I never thought I’d...

"Now on whom dost thou trust?"-- Isaiah 36:5

Reader, this is an important question. Listen to the Christian's answer, and see if it is yours. "On whom dost thou trust?" "I trust," says the Christian, "in a triune God. I trust the Father, believing that he has chosen me from before the foundations of...

Some churches like to crank it up to 11. But honestly, this post isn't about decibel level. It's about noise. Noise, after all, doesn't require electric amplifiers.

Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of yourharps I will not listen. (Amos 5:23)

The Lord addresses this to Israel...

For many Christians, reading the Bible consistently is a challenge.

In 2017, the American Bible Society reported that only 20% of Americans read their Bibles at least four times each week. This means that 80% of Americans read Scripture less frequently than that, if at all.

But God says his words are...

The face of evangelicalism is continually being bruised and battered by high-profile scandals and moral failings. Our response to these events ought to be a renewed effort at watching our life and doctrine. The sin of others, no matter how salacious, shouldn’t lead us to gossip but to a...

“Kids are resilient.” 

It’s a mantra I repeated to myself over and over again as I sat in my hospital bed in the high-risk unit of labor and delivery. I was 33 weeks pregnant with a likely partial placenta abruption, meaning every day I spent in that unit was a matter of life...

I send out an email to my church once a month, and there’s over a 1000 people in our database. I average about 20 social media posts a month that go out to a couple of thousand people as well. Additionally, I preach roughly three sermons a month, averaging 4000 words a sermon, to about a 1000...

We sat in the sun and its heat beat down in the same way my heart beat up. I felt sunny, as if my heart were strolling along and whistling back at the optimistic blue sky. But my friend was a different kind of blue, and she told me why, and her tears sprang easily. I could see so clearly how God...

My grandma passed away recently. She shuffled off this mortal coil. She died. There are so many ways to describe death. There are the heartfelt sayings like, “she is in a better place,” or “at least she doesn’t hurt anymore.” I am sure we could go on and on with the...

Albert Camus, a French writer, was among those who recognized that death shatters older notions of human significance. The “everyday man,” Camus wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus,” lives his life “with aims, a concern for the future or for justification.” This man...

God is in the business of opposing and exalting, of bringing down and lifting up.

There is one thing that the Scriptures say God exalts and lifts up. It’s not talent. It’s not effort. It’s not having it all together. It’s not good behavior or good plans. It’s not...

How would you live if you realized that nothing you fear could ever have the last word in your life? What would your days look like if you believed, in fact, that the most defining and secure reality of your very existence was not anything you could see?

At the end of Romans 8, we find Paul bringing...

Cross-Cultural Missions Is Not The Cure For Wanderlust

Anna D. writes about the desire to travel and see the world, and how we should not let this be the sole motivation for doing mission work. 

The Duties Required by the Ninth Commandment in a Social Media World

"You shall not bear false witness...

All For The Church Conference plenary sessions are now available to view. If you missed FTC this year, or if you want to hear one of these great sermons again, check them out below. 

The Church Invincible: Jason K. Allen

The Church Domestic: Russell D. Moore

The Church Prophetic: Owen...

"A living dog is better than a dead lion."-- Ecclesiastes 9:4

Life is a precious thing, and in its humblest form it is superior to death. This truth is eminently certain in spiritual things. It is better to be the least in the kingdom of heaven than the greatest out of it. The lowest degree of grace...

Before I knew the Lord, I wasn’t very comfortable with my emotions. I didn’t wear my heart on my sleeve and certainly didn’t want others to see what I felt. Or at least didn’t want them to see the feelings I associated with shame. But God made my heart more vulnerable when...

I can’t.

Our culture despises those two little words. Hatred for weakness and inadequacy is why we tell our kids never to say, “I can’t.” It’s why we love the inspiring words of Thomas the Tank Engine: “Yes, you can!” The belief that we’re capable of...

Can you imagine if all of your conversations were recorded? Certainly, some things we’ve said would embarrass us a bit if they became public record.

The early disciples had one of those conversations. Looking back years later, I’m sure they cringed at the memory. In Matthew 18 they...

When the Holy Spirit comes down, he changes our culture. We go from selfishness to selflessness, from pride to humility, from fear to courage. 

There’s an entry from the journal of John Wesley that proves the truth of Ephesians 5:18-21. Wesley was one of the key men God used in the...

Dear Church Planter,

You should preach less! I know that sounds bizarre, but it is nonetheless true. Just a few months ago, I spoke with a church planter who told me that he preached fifty out of fifty-two Sundays a year. That is far too much!

The first year of our plant, I preached almost every...

“Amongst all other chances lamentable, there hath been none a great time which seemed unto me more grievous, than the lamentable death and cruel handling of John Frith” – John Foxe^[1]

Confined in London’s Newgate prison in the summer of 1533, a young English Reformer penned a...

There is a particular kind of freedom that comes when you believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Contrary to the definition of freedom that runs rampant in the culture today, the freedom from moral constraint and self-determination, the gospel frees us at a deeper level. The gospel frees us to be who...

I was recently listening to the Acts 29/Gospel Coalition podcast, Churches Planting Churches, where my brother Matt Chandler was sharing about his new book, Take Heart, Christian Courage in the Age of Unbelief. You can listen to the episode here. What struck me was their...

After speaking at a conference once, I spoke with a young man who had suffered from a mental disability all his life. But what he lacked in intellectual capability he did not in theological insight. He said to me that sometimes he asks God why he had to be born with his disability. His brother, he...

We met Bob on our family vacation living next door to our house rental. We invited him over for coffee one morning, and he told us about his sixty years of life before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He mentioned how his wife left him after five years of marriage because he wouldn’t...