Christian faith is more than thinking, because the Christian message, the gospel, is much more than an idea. It is not just an idea; it’s a power.  The gospel bears fruit in you. It’s a living thing. But how does faith move from being an idea to being a power? You stop just believing in...

The Bible tells us faith begins with thinking. The Bible says faith requires and stimulates the profoundest thinking and reasoning. You cannot be a Christian without using your brain to its uttermost.  Nowadays, we’re told by our culture from the time we’re very little that the big questions—what is real, what is right and wrong,...

What is faith? What is it made of? How do you know if you have it? How do you lose it? How do you get it back? Hebrews 11 deals with all of these things through specific personal case studies of men and women who wrestled with issues of faith. I would suggest that it’s...

One mark of a supernaturally changed heart is a changed attitude and view of races and cultures.  In social relations, grace-changed Christians use their power to serve, not exploit. We’re going to look at this by looking at a dispute that happened in the church of Rome, and by comparing it to another dispute. These...

Some people say there’s a cultural crisis of integrity.  For example, Volkswagen was revealed to have deliberately used software designed to lie about emissions. It was a failure of integrity from one of the biggest corporations in the world. And some of you may be yawning, thinking that’s just the way things are. But the...

When the Greeks and Romans met the early Christians, one of the first things that surprised them was how Christians handled suffering.  Christianity brought into the world a view and a way of handling suffering that the world had never seen. It was one of the evidences of a supernaturally changed heart. And in Romans...

What are the characteristics of a supernaturally changed heart? You can be very moral and active in church and still be an incredibly impatient, bitter person. So we’re looking at what Paul says are the marks of a supernaturally changed heart. And for this, Romans 12 is an explosive passage.  Let’s look at what this...

Most of us know how to restrain a life. We start to get in trouble, so we change. But when the consequences go away, we snap back the way we were.  Human nature without supernatural intervention is like a rubber ball that’s squished, but when the pressure is off, it snaps right back. The rubber...