April 17, 2023
April 23 | Application (‘When Things Don’t Go Your Way’)
In a culture obsessed with personal empowerment, the Lord offers a unique alternative to control. It’s called “surrender.”
Articles for tag: Luke 5:1
September 14, 2020
Does It Really Help to ‘Send Thoughts and Prayers’? (Sept. 20 Lesson Application)
This “Application“ column goes with the Bible Lesson for Sept. 20, 2020: Pray (1 Timothy 2:1-8) ________ By David Faust Prayer gets a lot of lip service, but not a lot of respect. Do you see prayer as a last resort or your first response? Many treat God the way a pilot treats his parachute: He’s glad it’s there for emergencies, but he hopes he never has to use it. When a basketball player heaves a long shot that has little chance of hitting the basket, announcers say, “He threw up a prayer.” In football when the quarterback desperately flings
April 12, 2020
Application for April 19: Net Results
(This “Application“ column goes with the Bible study for April 19, 2020: “Power Over All of Creation.”) By David Faust First-century fishermen relied on their nets like carpenters rely on their hammers and farmers count on their plows. It took fishermen considerable skill, time, and effort to clean, dry, and mend their linen nets to keep them from rotting and wearing out. A seine net might be several hundred feet long and 20 feet deep, with cork or wood floats to keep the top of the net on the water’s surface and stone weights to pull the rest down into
July 31, 2016
5 Steps for Getting Your Group or Class to Invite New People
By Michael C. Mack How do you get members to invite people to their groups? Here are five specific principles you can use to help the people in your group or class, even the shyest ones, extend invitations: 1. The leader must go first! Don”™t go to your group with the ideas below until you have personally done these things yourself. As a leader, you are an example, a model, for those entrusted to you (1 Peter 5:3). 2. Don”™t do anything else until you”™ve spent time with God. Every strategy you use, every word you say, everything you do
August 25, 2010
A Heart for God
By Michael Mack Read Michael Mack”s sidebar, “Life in All Its Fullness.” ______ What do you want to be known for? What would you want people to say about you when you die? What do you want written in your obituary? At different stages of my life I would have responded to that question differently. But today, I want to be like Enoch. You don”t hear too many people say that, do you? People will say they want to have the faith of Abraham or the power of Moses or the wisdom of Solomon. But Enoch? I love what Genesis
July 14, 2010
Letting Go: The First Step Beyond
By Mark A. Taylor God is here. God is in control. I am not in control. And I don”t want to be. That simple testimony, offered by a middle-aged woman in a church service I visited this summer, has stayed with me through all the weeks since. She spoke of how God washed away her fears about her health and her family. She found peace when she finally decided to quit worrying and just submit her anxieties to him. “The last sentence is the biggest challenge,” someone in my group remarked afterwards. Almost everyone will say that God, or a
August 12, 2007
We Turned Vision into Action
By Joyce Long This story began in San Diego, November 2006, when Mount Pleasant Christian Church”s (Greenwood, Indiana) staff leaders attended a national outreach conference. There they realized our congregation needed to begin reaching out to AIDS patients. The idea incubated until February when planning began for a post-Easter sermon series. Then the pastors and directors borrowed the interactive Imagine concept from Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois, which had used this same theme during Christmas. Mount Pleasant adapted it to Matthew 25:34-45, focusing each week”s message on six parts: Imagine a world where no one is . . . hungry,
