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.

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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.

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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”?

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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

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

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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.

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Parents ask a lot of questions about their children: Did they get enough to eat today? Are they spending too much time in front of the screen? What type of schooling is best for them? While these sorts of concerns are important, making them the top parenting priority can cause them to be like packing foam—they’ll fill whatever box they’re set in, leaving little to no room for the most important question of all: What kind of spiritual heritage will I leave to my children?

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During Jesus’ ministry on earth, while people answered His call to follow Him, not all became lifelong followers. The Gospel of John tells us of at least one incident when many who had been His disciples “turned back and no longer walked with Him” (John 6:66). Nevertheless, some stood with Him through thick and thin, repenting and seeking His forgiveness on the occasions when they did fall away.

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The book of Amos contains a truth that is as unpalatable today as it was in Amos’s time: when God’s people begin to look and act like a culture that is defined by moral perversity, material prosperity, and religious hypocrisy, they will become alienated from their creator God. Persistent, unrepentant disobedience will lead to His judgment (Amos 3:13–15; cf. Rev. 2:12–29). Instead of living in the joy of fellowship with Him, those who profess to be God’s people will experience God turning away from them because of the sin they treasure.

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