Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church

Christianity claims not only that God exists, but that we can know him — despite the fact that none of us can access him in physical, visible or audible form. Christians believe this knowledge of God is nonetheless real, because we experience him in both indirect and direct ways that progressively change us, inside and out.

Why isn’t God more obvious? Paul addresses a pluralistic audience in Athens with three broad arguments: 1) Because we interpret the evidence differently, 2) because we are more religious than we think, and 3) because our love is out of whack. Thankfully, God not only makes himself findable but seeks us out through the person of Jesus, whom Paul refers to in v. 31 as “a man he has appointed.”

Hebrews 13:4 teaches that all Christians, whether single, married, widowed or divorced, are called to “hold marriage in honor” and to “let the marriage bed [sex]” be undefiled. This includes the bracing standard that God designed sex only for the marriage covenant between a husband and wife. Closer investigation of the context around Hebrews 13:4 reveals the surprising genius of God’s design, as w...

Paul’s charge to children and bondservants applies to spiritual children as well: We should honor and obey our spiritual parents as if they were the Lord himself. Knowing how easily this challenge can be abused, however, God places firm limits on the authority of mothers and fathers. At the same time, Paul commends the limitless blessings of honoring and obeying them.

Every Christian has both the responsibility and the privilege to build up people who are spiritually downstream from us. Paul's example of how to do that is characterized by God's Gospel proclaimed with God's energy, humble accountability, God-pleasing, gentleness, self-giving, sacrifice, integrity, and muscular mentoring — exactly the way Jesus builds us up!

Faith in Jesus adopts us into his family, giving each of us a vast number of brothers and sisters with whom we will spend eternity. Whatever additional roles we may have, this is the fundamental way that men and women should see each other in the church. Paul’s final greeting to the Roman Christians models ways that we: 1) commit to each other’s adoption, 2) celebrate each other’s differences, 3)...

The root of all temptation is distrust in the goodness of God. All kinds of circumstances, then, can be tempting – not just obvious enticements to engage in illicit behavior. Tempting circumstances include any form of evil, or the Evil One, which can overwhelm us and lead to cynicism, resignation or despair. For this reason Jesus encourages us to ask our Father to spare us from the worst of both....

God‘s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are related: you can’t have one without the other.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is the most straightforward petition in the Lord's prayer, yet it has multiple layers of meaning. The surface meaning reminds us of our daily physical dependence on the Lord. The social meaning challenges us to help feed other people. The spiritual meaning  reveals that our deepest need is for communion with the Triune God, given to us by Jesus. The eschatologica...

Asking God for his kingdom to come and his will to be done is one of the most comforting and most dangerous prayers a Christian can pray. It's comforting because it validates our experience and invites us to lament; because Jesus prayed it for us in Gethsemane and secured our adoption in his family; and because Jesus has guaranteed that the fulness of the kingdom will come when he returns. At the...

To "hallow" God's name means to honor him as holy, both with our lips and with our lives. Dozens of verbs could flesh out this definition: glorify, bless, adore, exalt, revere, esteem, praise, fear, worship, etc. The more we recognize how singularly holy God is, the more amazed we are that we are able to come near him in Christ.  We can't make ourselves feel God's holiness, but we can cultivate th...

The Lord's Prayer doesn't just teach us to pray. It summarizes the entire Christian life, starting with the terms of our relationship with God. Only Jesus has earned the right to call God Father. By inviting us to call him our Father, too, Jesus preaches the Good News: That all who trust in his death and resurrection can be adopted into God's family. This means he is not only willing to hear our p...

In Matthew 23, Jesus is going to teach us how grace and accountability go hand in hand. How inward righteousness is more important than visual obedience; internal faith is closely followed by external action. In other words, the kingdom of God requires all of its members to be servant leaders just like their king. Here is the bookends message - God’s kingdom is not a community to be defined by pow...

John's little letter is a compass for ordinary faithfulness in the daily valleys of the Christian faith. In the face of false teachers, he challenges us to examine ourselves for healthy faith: Where do you anchor your hope? Are you a truth person or a love person? and What are you willing to lose? Ultimately, he refuses to pit truth and love against each other, and commends instead the transformin...

Psalm 18 is a picture of resurrection that finds fulfillment in Jesus. In particular: • God rescued David from death because he delighted in him. • God rescued Jesus from death because he supremely delighted in him. • God rescues all who are united to Jesus by faith – because he delights in you, too! When we understand this delight at the heart of God the father, it frees us up to delight right ba...