Is Christmas the happiest time of the year? No, it’s even better than that. Christ’s coming provides the very possibility of joy year-round.

I wasn’t prepared for the emotion I would feel when I saw the fifth video released about Planned Parenthood. The severed little hand, reaching out from the pinkish soup of other mutilated body parts, evoked in me more than a deep, sick feeling. The only word that comes to my mind is the sense of being crushed—crushed by the evil I was seeing.

If Paul had planted perfect churches, we might have the mistaken notion that the power for healthy churches died with the apostles, and that the best we can do now is to try to get back to the model of those early churches. In reality, however, the “power” for healthy churches and healthy Christians is just as alive today as He was in the first century. As Paul himself put it: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

Jesus’ tender words from the cross affirm that mothers deserve honor. But his words also reveal that motherhood is much more than conceiving a child. From Jesus’ perspective, the most significant thing that a woman can share with someone is not her DNA, but her faith in Christ.

In a previous post, I suggested that our natural tendency is to put other people somewhere along an imaginary line, stretched between the two poles …

The people whose examples stir me most are dead now—at least their bodies don’t live on the earth anymore. But I can still take walks with them by reading their biographies. Here are snippets from the writings of several men whose examples never fail to stir me, correct me, and excite my hunger for God.

If a recently married man told me, “Give me a few good reasons why I should move in with my wife,” I supposed I would …

Because Jesus died our sin, we are free to confess, and God is free to forgive.

What is the balance between introspection and self-obliviousness? When does healthy introspection become morbid self-inspection? Consider these six Scriptural truths.

Our little “idolatry/enmity” game has simple but firm rules: delight me, humor me, comfort me, or love me, and you get closer to my “idol” pole; but annoy me, disregard me, disappoint me, or threaten me, and you get closer to my enemy pole. Whenever a relationship promises to deliver happiness, we scoot that person toward the “idol” pole of our line. And whenever a relationship threatens to obstruct our happiness, we push that person toward the “enemy” pole of our line.