Sharpening a knife is a great analogy for spiritual growth. I don’t know about you, but at times I feel dull spiritually—yes, I’m still a knife (Christian), but I’m not as effective, joyful, or holy as I should be. Like Paul, I fail to do what I want. Instead, I do what I know is wrong.

  Thinking about what you would do if you had only one month to live is a very instructive exercise. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Paul knows that our days are short and that…

Theologian Roger Olsen writes: “A popular misconception—perhaps a Christian urban legend—is that the United States Secret Service never shows bank tellers counterfeit money when teaching them to identify it. The agents who do the training, so the legend goes, show bank tellers only examples of genuine money so that when the phony money appears before…

Sunday was the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. While Christians were praying for persecuted believers around the world, a shooter walked into a Texas church service and opened fire. At least twenty-six people were killed and twenty more were injured. This is a reminder that Christians and churches are not immune from…

  A few years ago, my wife Holly said to me, “Art, you’re in pretty good shape, but your upper body could use some work!” I know how to take a hint. So I drove over later that week to the sports equipment store. I checked out the Weider 5370. It was a weight machine…

Everything in our culture pushes back against grace. The culture shouts the message that you are what you achieve, that your value depends on your performance. Young girls become anorexic, in part, because they are convinced that their identity is anchored in their appearance. Communities like Flower Mound reinforce the idea that you are what…

We got off to a great start in our Bridge Beyond campaign this past Sunday, with $70,000 being pledged to our missions efforts domestically and internationally! Thank you to those who have already made commitments that will help us share the gospel in different parts of the world. This is a very promising beginning. Many…

Sometimes we imagine that the big characters of the bible didn’t have struggles. We almost conceive of them as superhuman, impervious to any real challenges. If anyone in the bible disproves this, it is David. The Psalms are crammed with David’s cries to God for help. David wrestles with his faith. Why has God seemed…

My wife Holly had been driving a van that gave us all kinds of trouble. In the middle of 104 degree heat in Dallas, the air conditioning system was blowing hot air. So after spending hundreds of dollar to try and fix it, we thought, maybe it’s time to look for something more reliable. So…

Our thanks to all of you who gave generously to support hurricane relief in south Texas! Gifts dedicated to this effort totaled $8330. In addition, our missions committee has earmarked $6000 from the missions budget for this purpose. This means that BridgeWay will be sending a check in the amount of $14,830 to churches in…

This Sunday, 25% of our regular offering will be dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. If you have already written your offering check and want to do more to help, please feel free to write another check and drop it in the offering basket. You can also give to hurricane assistance on the BridgeWay…

In their book Next Door As It Is in Heaven, Lance Ford and Brad Briscoe discuss the profound loneliness people are experiencing in our world. They make the point that loneliness often causes us to feel that we have little value. They also point out that we often make things worse by failing to form…

What if God were on Facebook? What would his page look like? And what if he approached his profile the way most us do? The Deity Relationship status: Triune and serenely blissful Number of friends: Only I know Unfriended: List currently blocked Photos: None available (see second commandment) Timeline: From the beginning—Created the world, didn’t…

As we conclude our look at the life of the apostle Paul, let me offer one final observation. Some people scratch their heads over Acts 27 and 28. These chapters detail Paul’s trip to Rome to stand trial before Nero. Luke chronicles the voyage, the storms, and the shipwreck. God had appeared to Paul in…

How do Silicon Valley tech gurus design a successful app, an app that will hook consumers and then keep them hooked so they keep coming back to the app? Some app designers call this process “captology,” or the art of capturing people’s attention and making it hard for them to escape. In his book Hooked:…

T.S. Eliot wrote this epitaph over America: “And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.” I’m not ready to write off America, but I do see serious signs of cultural disintegration in our country. Like ancient Greece, we bow down to…

John McRay writes, “Paul may have spent as much as 25 percent of his time as a missionary in prison. We know of his brief lock-up in Philippi, two years’ incarceration in Caesarea, and at least another two in Rome. Yet Paul says he experienced “far more imprisonments,” than his opponents. To understand Paul, we…

Other than Jesus Christ, it could be argued that no one has ever changed the world more than the apostle Paul. Paul was a man obsessed! He went from being Christianity’s greatest opponent to Christianity’s greatest proponent. Paul was willing to go anywhere and do anything to advance the gospel. He was committed to Christ…

One World War II historian wrote: “In early 1940, the British and their allies sent a force of some 350,000 men into the low countries of Europe to stem the tide of German advance into France, Belgium and Holland. Caught in a brilliant pincer movement by the invading German forces the beleaguered British Expeditionary Force…

An article in New York magazine reports that the self-help movement has mushroomed into an “$11 billion industry dedicated to telling us how to improve our lives.” The article observed: Today, there are at least 45,000 [books] in print of the optimize-everything cult we now call “self-help” …. Twenty years ago, when Chicken Soup for…

In his book Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias tells the story about how God, the Master Weaver, sovereignly works to weave beauty into our lives as we respond to his will. During a trip to India, Zacharias noticed a father and son who were weaving some of the most beautiful Indian wedding saris in…

Baptism Sunday is this Sunday! If you’ve never been baptized, let me encourage you to take this crucial step in your walk with God. Sometimes people ask me, how do I know if I’m ready to be baptized? I think there are a few helpful things to consider when a person is contemplating baptism. 1….

Easter changes everything. Paul spends all of 1 Corinthians 15 affirming the significance of the resurrection. He argues that now life has meaning, because Christ is risen from the dead. “The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal…

Some bad news and some good news. First, the bad news. Less than half of American churchgoers plan to invite unchurched people to Easter worship service this year, a new survey found. Only one out of three active churchgoers (31 percent) said they would definitely invite someone they know who does not usually attend church…

John Ortberg tells the following story: In May 2009, my family was in Azusa, California, because one of our kids was graduating from Azusa Pacific University. My wife, Nancy, was going to speak at the commencement ceremonies, so she and I were invited to a special gathering of about 50 people—people from the graduating class…

Thascius was anything but a Christian. He was born in AD 200 to a well-placed family of Carthage. He was classically educated, wealthy, a lawyer, an orator, and a pagan. Then everything changed. He decided at the age of forty-five to follow Christ. He changed his name to Cyprian and gave a big portion of…

Half a century ago, an upholsterer from San Francisco made a curious discovery. He was called to a cardiologist’s office to reupholster some chairs in the waiting room. When he looked at the furniture, he wondered immediately what was wrong with the patients. Only the front edge of the seats and the first few inches…

  Mark Batterson writes: “On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin climbed aboard Apollo 11 on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The multistage rocket weighed 102,907 pounds, but it carried 5,625,000 pounds of propellant. Breaking the sound barrier is one thing; exiting the earth’s atmosphere is another thing…

As you read through the gospel of Mark, you will discover that Jesus often tells people not to advertise the news about him. He tells a healed leper not to tell anyone (Mark 1:43). He gives evil spirits strict orders not to tell who he is (Mark 3:12). He rises a girl from the dead…

God is huge. He is at the highest height and the deepest low. The furthest galaxy discovered by spectroscopy is z8_GND_5296. 6. The galaxy is 13.8 billion light-years old, or 13.8 billion light-years away. Spatially speaking, it’s the highest height. The deepest depth is the Challenger Deep, part of a trench 6.85 miles beneath the…

One of the reasons the selfie culture is so problematic is that it thrives on comparison. We want to prove ourselves better than others or better-looking than others or smarter than others or richer than others. This is why people work overtime to produce an image that puts them in the best possible light. Photos…

  I hope that you have accepted the “New Testament challenge,” to read through the New Testament in 2017. If you started in Matthew, you should be reading Matthew chapters 11-15 this week. This week’s readings include Matthew 12:31, where Jesus says, “And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be…

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but a new study reports self-regard, self-promotion, and plain old bragging are far more prominent in pop music than they were a quarter-century ago. The authors of the study note that, in 1990, blatant bragging was basically confined to rap music. The study analyzed the lyrics of the top…

I’m excited about the challenge of reading through the New Testament in 2017! As I’ve mentioned, you can read the entire New Testament by reading one chapter per day, 5 days a week. Nothing will contribute to your spiritual growth like reading the Bible and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s truth to you…

As we approach a new year, I’m encouraging every member at BridgeWay to read through the entire New Testament in 2017. Nothing will assist in your spiritual growth like reading and praying over the Word of God. Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” Hebrews 4:12, “For…

Mark Buchanan told the conversion story of a woman named Wanda. She came to Christ after struggling with addictions in her life. Mark went on to tell the rest of her story: “Wanda did well for about eight months—got into Alpha and a 12-step group, got her kids back. Then she didn’t do well, in…

Mr. Otha Anders, of Ruston, Louisiana, spent 45 years bending down and collecting something most of us ignore—pennies. In October of 2015, the 73-year-old Anders, a supervisor for in-school suspended children, took them to his local bank—in 15 five-gallon jugs—and deposited a grand total of $5,136.14 worth of pennies into his account. The bank’s coin…

Twitter, the social media platform where users compose messages of 140 characters or less, now hosts an impressive one billion user accounts. But whether even half that many people are actually using the service is another question. Some of these accounts might be users who have lost interest, but many of these accounts are fake….

David Gushee wrote a book called The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust. He studied people in Europe during WWII who rescued Jews from the Nazis. The rescuers often harbored the Jewish people at tremendous personal risk. If the rescuers were caught keeping Jews, they were often executed themselves. Gushee wanted to know if Christians lived…

Going all in for God means an uncompromising commitment to His will. But commitments are hard to come by these days. If you’re interested in being a vegetarian, but you’re concerned you might not be able to make the commitment, don’t worry. Now you can be a flexitarian. A lot of people want to be…

Going “All In” means making the choice to bet everything you have on God! It means making the choice to follow Christ rather than following the world. Making wise decisions is critical to your future. A few years ago, a researcher asked 100 American and Japanese college students to take a piece of paper. On…

Alan Hirsch points out that sometimes instead of evangelizing the world, we are evangelized by the world. It’s discipleship in reverse. Rather than impacting our culture, the culture has an impact on us. Madison Avenue and the media work overtime to convince us to buy more stuff and accumulate more things. The result is that…

Growing in Christ always requires community. Apart from others, we turn inward and fail to live out God’s will for our lives. A few years ago, Google released a database of over 5 million books published between 1500 and 2008. You can now type a search word into the database and discover how often words…

Boys in the Boat is the thrilling true story of the 1936 University of Washington crew team. The team went from obscurity to a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. They didn’t have the pedigree of crews from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. They were kids raised on farms and near shipyards. A ragtag team…

Baptism Sunday is coming up on August 21! That day we’ll baptize a number of people who have been considering this important commitment. Sometimes people ask me, “How do I know when I’m ready to be baptized?” Where baptism is concerned, your readiness depends on a couple of things: 1. Do you understand that you…

There’s heartbreaking news today as we learn of 12 Dallas police officers being shot, 5 of them fatally during a protest rally in downtown Dallas last night. This assault on those who risk their lives to preserve our freedom is shocking and repulsive. It’s a reminder that law enforcement officers who serve to protect us…

According to researchers at Erasmus University carrying a grudge can weigh you down—literally. The researchers asked study participants to write about a time when they’d experienced a conflict. Some were instructed to reflect on a time when they didn’t forgive the offender, others were told to think about the time they did forgive the person,…

Chippie the parakeet was minding his own business and singing his song one day when his owner decided to clean out his cage. With the vacuum cleaner. The phone rang and the lady went to answer it. That’s when things started to go bad for little Chippie. The woman wasn’t paying attention, and the business…

Contemporary philosopher Simon Critchley writes about how we don’t know how to prepare for death. He’s especially surprised that Christians, who have many reasons not to fear death, are still so afraid to die. A detailed national survey … from 2003 claimed that fully 92 percent of Americans believe in God, 85 percent believe in…

Easter is the announcement that what God said he would do, he accomplished in the finished work of Christ at the cross. Easter has the power to morph our lives because of the irrepressible strength of the resurrected Christ. One of the most compelling proofs of the resurrection is in the undeniable changes in people’s…

The cross was a symbol used to mock Christians for what they believed. Archaeologists have uncovered an engraving from the time of the early church which reveals a bit of what the mind of the ancient Roman world was like. The engraving shows a picture of a man with a donkey head being crucified. Next…

In September 2013, the headline on the cover of Time read: “Can Google Solve Death?” Google’s CEO announced a new division of Google known as Calico. Calico is dedicated to health and aging issues and to solving the problem of death. The editors of Time asked why Google, a high-tech company, would spend so many…

Marcello Di Cintio points out that human beings have always been preoccupied with building walls. In the first century, the Roman emperor Hadrian built a 75-mile wall across Roman Britain. In the 1870s, Argentina built a line of trenches and watchtowers called the Zanja de Alsina to protect Buenos Aires from invasion by indigenous peoples….

John 4:10, “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’” These are the words Christ speaks to the woman at the well. He later identifies living water as ‘eternal life’….

A lot of people think of church in the same way they think of a cruise ship: they think they call the shots. They ask these questions: *Do I like the music they play in the ballroom? *Do I like the captain and his staff? *Do I get good service, and are my needs met?…