Articles

Christians are not free from pain in this life. Pop theology may try to tell us that with enough faith, we won’t face heartache or feel crushed by sin and its effects. But the Bible disagrees. The truth is that it is not possible to always live at high tide. The waters inevitably recede, and sometimes we must retreat to the harbor and wait on God to bring the tide back in.

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When the topic of biblical stewardship and finances comes up, what is one guiding principle that quickly comes to mind? The most common answer is almost certainly tithe. And yet, for a word that is so common in the language of church life, there’s a good deal of misunderstanding about what it means. So let’s clear up some of the confusion by looking at what the Bible teaches about tithing and the Christian’s relationship to it.

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Many in the church today feel marginalized by the wider world. Being a Christian often doesn’t have the same cultural capital it once did, and antagonism—even hostility—toward Christianity often puts us on the defensive.

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By all accounts, the Cleveland Orchestra is one of the finest symphony orchestras in America—indeed, even in the world. Founded in 1918, the orchestra’s music has amazed listeners and impressed the toughest critics across the globe for over a century.

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Talk of the devil or demons inevitably evokes images and ideas from popular culture and folk religion. Whether the mention of Satan conjures an image of a red, cartoonish, pitchfork-wielding monstrosity or a good-looking, smooth-talking deal maker, we all have preconceptions about him.

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Refusing to eat the special diet assigned to them seems a strange place for Daniel and his fellow young Jewish exiles to draw a line. But in the Old Testament, one of the distinguishing features of God’s people was the rules they followed about what they would and would not eat and drink. Dietary choice for God’s people was not just an external manifestation of nothing much; rather, it was an external outworking of their deeply held convictions about what it meant to belong to God.

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King Nebuchadnezzar sets up a statue of himself and says, in essence, “I have had this amazing image put up, and I want universal submission and worship, from everyone, or else.”

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“Are you a person of faith?” How you respond to that question will depend on what you think faith actually is. Given all the misconceptions and misappropriations of the word faith in our culture, it’s no surprise that you might hesitate to answer.

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“What I believe makes me an outsider.” This is a sentiment shared by many Christians these days. Far removed from the time of a “moral majority,” we are now living with greater awareness that this broken, sinful world is not our home. What the Bible teaches about Christians is becoming clearer to our generation in the West: we are “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11).

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In the New Testament, successful Gospel ministry required much change. Though he was free, Paul made himself a servant to all (1 Cor. 9:19–23). To the Jews he became as a Jew. To those under the law he became as one under the law. To those outside the law he again changed accordingly. To the weak he became weak. All that is to say, for the sake of Gospel ministry, he changed. He adapted. He did what he had to do to see Christ’s name glorified.

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