Dear Pastor Mike, My wife is attending a Bible study at a nearby church with a number of older women. Each week she comes home frustrated with much of the teaching she is hearing there and wants to know how to help the ladies with their understanding of the Bible and their relationships with God. […]
This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. (Ps 118:24) When I first became a Christian in the Navy, this verse made up one of my favorite songs. It had parts. The guys sang, “this is the day.” And the women followed with, “this is the day.” And so […]
“Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that’” (Jas 4:15). Shortly after my wife died, someone came up to me and said, “Welcome to the new normal.” I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. Since then, I think I’ve figured it out. I […]
After high school, I spent four very cool years in the Navy riding around in a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine (USS Ray SSN 653). When you are stationed on a boat (submarines are called boats), you need to spend close to a year getting what they called “qualified.” Getting qualified means learning every system on […]
Yesterday I posted a list of things that can make change difficult. You can read it here. Today, I have another list of things that often make change hard. Sometimes the fear of failing can make change difficult. We may have tried that before and things went well for a few weeks, but then the wheels […]
I work with a lot of people who need to make some changes in the way they think about God and their subsequent behavior. Some people take to change like ducks to water. But other people really have a hard time changing. I’d like to take a few moments to talk about why I think […]
I think it’s rather easy to agree that a heterosexual man who commits adultery with a woman has sinned — they both have. We get that. A homosexual man, acting on that impulse with another man, has sinned — they both have. Moving back one step, to the level of desire, a heterosexual man desiring […]
Dear Dr. Lawyer, There’s no scripture where God says you can’t refer to secular reasoning. Proverbs is full of such. Jesus told a parable about how the people of this world are sometimes smarter than the people of the kingdom. Moses listened to Jethro, God confirming that Jethro’s apparently secular logic was correct. To say […]
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:1–3). In chapter four of his letter to […]
The Center for Biblical Counseling (CBC), a reformed and evangelical ministry, empowers God’s people to support, encourage, and disciple those facing life’s challenges through the ministry of the gospel.
