He takes a whole mass of nothing, a void of empty, and fills it with light—and life! This is our God. When His heart breaks over evil and sin consuming His precious creation, He seeks out the faithful and delivers them. After the waters roar and the mountain peaks are covered, He covers us with [...]

Last Christmas, our pastor used the hymn “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as inspiration for a sermon. In the third verse, eighteenth-century preacher Charles Wesley wrote lyrics about how Jesus was born to give us second birth. But what does it mean to have second birth? When Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command, sin and [...]

For many years, my family celebrated Christmas at my grandparents' home in northern Wisconsin, where winter is typically very cold and snowy. One year my dad thought it would be fun if he and I hiked out into the woods and cooked breakfast over a fire. We got lost. Then we couldn't start the fire. [...]

Every Christmas, I hear about the “wise men” coming to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus as recorded in Matthew 2. But why is this historical event important? Who were the wise men and how did they play a key role in the Christmas drama? Let's take a closer look at the wise men. The Bible [...]

For as long as Sapphira could remember, the world had been at war. For years she had defended her small kingdom against the fierce advances of the Hadyssian empire, and so far they had remained free, as had her sisters' kingdoms to the north and to the south. But every time her armies returned from [...]

Snowflakes falling, Christmas coming Born in a manger No longer strangers To God our Father Who sent His Son To live among us And rescue us from danger Our sinful, flawed, and helpless selves The weight of shame and crushing doubts Fled like the shepherds ran that night To the baby wrapped in LIGHT Gift [...]

Being cared for is one of our deepest needs as humans, and caring for others is a noble thing to do. The reason we care for others is because God cares for us. All throughout the Bible, we see examples of God caring for His people. When Jesus came to earth, He further revealed God's [...]

Night falls, and in the quiet, the thoughts come: "What did I do today that matters? Could I have done something differently in that situation? If this was my last day on earth, would I be happy with the way I spent it?" But how do we know if what we did matters? As children [...]

Some Bible stories are easy for me to relate to. When Simon Peter and his friends go fishing for a long period of time and catch nothing, I feel their pain. They most likely expected to catch a lot of fish but came up completely empty. Keep in mind these are professional fishermen who stayed [...]

Matthew 27 describes one of the most heart-wrenching episodes ever recorded. After hours of physical beating, the Son of God, the promised Messiah, is now on trial before Pilate. He is there because Judas, one of His disciples, has betrayed Him. The other disciples, some of whom declared their allegiance to Him only hours before, [...]