It's not that you need to increase faith; it's that you need to learn how to use your faith. You don't need to grow your faith or get more faith. You need to grow in your faith, as in: learn to how to take the faith you've already been given & put it into practice.

Even those times when God seems to be acting against us, if we could only look behind the veil, we would understand that God is for us.

Thanksgiving should be more than just one day!

Don’t judge your circumstances by your feelings. Judge your circumstances by the Holy Spirit & by the Word of God. When you do that, a powerful conclusion emerges: These great trials give me great hope that God means a great benefit to me.

The question before us today is simple & profound: What is faith & how does it work? This is a crucial topic because I think we often don’t appreciate how precious & precarious is the life of faith.

For the most part, you are where you are right now because that’s where you want to be. If you were hungry for something better from God, you could have it.

There is no other religion in the whole world like Christianity. We are the only people in the world who preach free grace. Ours is the only free religion in the world. Every other religion says, “Do this & live.” Our God says, “It has been done for you.” That’s the whole gospel in just 3 words: Do vs. Done.

Why would anyone love a “worthless” person? The answer is: God loves us in spite of our sin & not because of some supposed worth he found in us. To put it in crass terms, he found nothing worth saving in us but he saved us anyway because that’s the kind of God he is. That thought is both humbling & thrilling.

There is only one God & he demands our exclusive worship. After reminding the Jews that he had delivered them from Egypt, God said: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3 ESV). That’s clear, isn’t it? No other gods, period. God is Number One. And there is no Number Two.

Listen to what John said in v 11: This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Doctrine is necessary. Knowledge of the truth is necessary. aith, obedience, holiness—these are necessary. But one level higher on the ladder of the Christian life is love.