Articles

Jesus Christ’s teaching about possessions is radical. It confronts both the selfish society in which we live and the sleeping church, which has so often gone with the flow of the world’s anxieties and greed. If the church is to be a shaft of light in the world’s darkness, then those who follow Christ will need to demonstrate a godly outlook toward worldly goods by embracing an absolute trust in the Father’s provision.

Topics: Articles

To one degree or another, everyone has faith. Anyone who has sat down in a barber’s chair has exercised faith in the barber’s skill. Anyone who has used an app to send money has trusted that it will get to the right person. But when it comes to the realm of religious experience, all kinds of spurious notions about faith abound. Indeed, one of the great barriers to an experience of true faith in God is confusion about what that faith actually is.

Topics: Articles

There’s something about one year ending and another beginning that encourages reflection on what life is really about. As we reflect on the previous year’s joys and disappointments and wonder at what the coming year might bring, we often are more ready than usual to face questions about mortality and significance. Such musing may lead us to resolutions for good behavior—but it would be better if it led us first to pray the prayer of Moses in Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”

Topics: Articles

During His earthly ministry, Jesus never quite commanded His disciples to pray. Instead, He did something much more striking: He modeled prayer. He showed His disciples that prayer was a necessity by frequently going away to be in conversation with His Father (e.g., Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:18). And in His teaching, He simply assumed that prayer would be a part of their lives: “When you pray, say…” (Luke 11:2, emphasis added). After Jesus ascended to heaven, prayer became one of the foundational practices to which the early Christians devoted themselves (Acts 2:42). They recognized that prayer was and is an essential part of following Christ—because like Him, disciples depend on the Father for everything they need.

Topics: Articles

Many of us are familiar with Christmas carols. Every year, we hear them on our radios, on our smart speakers, on our TVs, or while we’re out shopping. Perhaps we even grew up singing them with family and could speak to some of the story those songs tell. But familiarity with Christmas is a far cry from understanding its significance. It’s one thing to sing about Christmas; it’s quite another to consider where each of us stands in relation to the event it celebrates.

Topics: Articles

When the angel visited Mary and Joseph to announce the birth of the Messiah, he gave clear instructions concerning the child’s name: “You shall call his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:31). Christ has many glorious names: King, Creator, Lord, Judge, Son of God, Son of David, Master, I Am, the First and the Last, etc. But the angel commanded that a very specific name be given Him at His birth—and we may wonder at the intention behind that choice. Why “Jesus”?

Topics: Articles

By Alistair Begg

A little over a decade ago, English journalist Melanie Phillips, writing on the state of Western civilization, observed, “Society seems to be in the grip of a mass derangement.” There is, she writes, a “sense that the world has slipped off the axis of reason,” causing many to wonder, “How is anyone to work out who is right in such a babble of ‘experts’ and with so much conflicting information?”¹

Topics: Begg's Blog, Articles

Topics: Articles

In his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British nation, King George VI read from a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins

Topics: Articles

It doesn’t require a very critical reading of the four Gospels to notice that the twelve disciples often missed the mark when it came to understanding what it means to follow Jesus. Even though they were bold enough to confess that Jesus was the Messiah (Luke 9:20), they still had little grasp of what that truly meant. Indeed, they seemed to mistakenly think that Jesus’ anointing would lead to the kind of worldly power that people have always sought after (Luke 9:46). But Jesus taught that a key part of being the Messiah was self-denial, death, and ultimately resurrection—and that to follow Him would mean the same for all of His disciples.

Topics: Articles