A church is not, and cannot be, just the pastor or paid staff or leadership team. A church is the membership and friends, woven together in mutual support, upbuilding, and growth.

The Gospel helps us know our WHY and, at the same time, solves, resolves, and satisfies every WHY we might have.

Whatever thing I thought would make life good… It will never be enough. It was, of course, never supposed to be enough. Only the gift of God through Christ in the Spirit “fills” us.

When the Gospel-WHY changes our HOW, this will transform WHAT we do.

HOW do I get up in the morning? HOW do I do my work? HOW do I treat these people? HOW do I make plans, manage money, spend my down-time? WHY changes HOW, and everything is changed.

The HOWs of our lives are determined by the WHYs of our heart.

When WHY changes, everything changes. Motives and desires are in everything we do. The Gospel changes our WHY and WHY changes everything.

Tuesday some of the folks on the Building Committee toured several area church buildings. We asked our guides various questions. But our main concern was this: What designed features have you found most helpful for ministry, and what features have you grown frustrated by?

These were the most common replies.

When you don’t know how to pray, when your mind is just too chaotic, the Lord, your shepherd, is with you, watching over you, praying to God the Father for you. We are always being prayed for by Jesus. We are always on His mind, in His heart. “He will hold me fast.”

So often we go about our lives without regard for what may be entering our lives, or what we may be introducing into the lives of others. We are reactive and passive. Weed seeds blow in or their roots tunnel toward us, and suddenly we're wrapped up in what is just The Most nonsense, anxiety, or foolishness.

Would you please pray for me, and pray for the preaching at Fellowship Bible Church?

On Sunday we observed that the Life of God is conveyed to us as “Light,” which is given to us in Scripture. But in order to benefit from that Life and Light, we must absorb the Word. That is, we want to understand the “author’s intended meaning” and the connection of that teaching to our lives.

Ever find yourself doing or saying something, or in a situation, where you wonder, "Why am I doing this? How did I get here? What is happening?" The game got away from you. The energy shifted. You made some poor choices and the consequences were greater than you expected.

To love the Lord with *all our minds? There’s quite a bit of space between where we are today, and whatever “all” means.

Peter opens his first letter with a paragraph in praise of faith. Faith, he says, is God’s power guarding us till we enjoy the full salvation coming to us soon. (1Peter 2:5) Genuine faith, Peter says, is more precious than gold.

Godly friends honor the seriousness of our problems, but they refuse to accept despair, they refuse to admit unlovability, and they refuse to let us off the hook. The best advice comes from redeemed people for whom redemption has become the shape of their thought process.

Jesus says that if we're faithful with "unrighteous wealth"--what we just call "money" or "wealth"--then we'll be entrusted with "true wealth." This is a contrast, rather than a continuum. He's not talking about "more" but rather "other."

Psalm 101 is mostly affirmations, self-talk taken right off the best of the web’s “best practices for great mornings” articles.

What has Paul been doing in Galatia? He’s been engaged in the spiritually exhausting, emotionally demanding, mentally taxing work of introducing sinners to Jesus and trying his best to make sure they understand who Jesus is and what He did and what that now means for them. It’s labor, he says, toil, struggle; it’s hard work.

I’ve been reflecting on the Bible’s historicity. That is the question of whether the story of the Bible is meant to be read as existing within the same universe, the same timeline, on the same planet, having the same sorts of people, as our lives. The answer, of course, is yes: The Bible is clearly, thickly, meant to be read as historical. All measures of historicity verify this.

Psalm 112 describes a man whose "righteousness endures forever." In ten verses there are three references to how "his righteousness endures forever... he will never be shaken; the righteous will be remembered forever." (3, 6, 9)