Living Stones Church, Red Deer, Alberta

In addressing the challenges at Corinth, Paul faced ongoing conflict with false teachers. Paul’s final presentation to the Corinthian church, aimed at persuading those who were being influenced and drawn away from a biblical understanding of Jesus and the gospel, addresses the sensationalism of the false teachers' visions and revelations. Even today, people are wowed by people retelling sensationa...

The true measure of a person is not what they have acquired or achieved but what they have had to endure, struggle through, and suffer in their lives to fulfil God’s purposes and assignment for their lives. John Piper writes in “ The Roots of Endurance,”  “I have found myself in conversation with Christians for whom it is simply a given that you do not put yourself or your family at risk. The comm...

Nearly forty years ago, one of the spiritual leaders in our church family attended a two-day event sponsored by a group that challenged the validity of his faith in Christ. He was told that he was not experiencing the totality of the gospel and that he needed to do certain things for it to occur in his life. The approach was fear-driven and moved him away from the ‘freedom that there is in Christ’...

How often do we take a text of Scripture and apply that truth personally in our lives, only to discover, once understood in its biblical context, an even greater reality? That’s exactly what happened to me this week. Since I had never studied 2 Corinthians in my undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate courses, nor had I ever taught or preached from it, except for a few isolated texts, I was start...

All the arguments in the world cannot explain away the power of an experience with the living God. Unfortunately, for many, Christianity is strictly theory rather than reality. It is critical that our faith does not rest solely on what is in our heads. An encounter with Christ will do more to move our emotions and wills. Biblical faith affects the total personality: our minds, our emotions, and ou...

Life is all about stewardship or management. How do we manage what God entrusts to us? There are a number of areas that we are tested in. How do we handle our time? Another area is the finances that God entrusts to us. The greatest area of stewardship is the people God calls us to care for. There are people that God places in our lives, siblings, children, parents, co-workers, and neighbours. Depe...

Each of us is living out our lives within the framework of a greater story. From the very beginning of time, God’s plan is to reveal his amazing love to each of us, despite our sin, but also the sin of others. Our sin affects not only our lives but also others'. So, many people today are experiencing the pain from the sins of others. How do we handle that? One of the greatest tools is forgiveness,...

When we think of someone who is generous, we often think only in terms of what they give financially, but the reality is that true generosity is an attitude that is reflected in how a person treats others. Giving money is only one aspect of true generosity. Generosity is the giving of oneself for the good of others, which includes our time, our concern for others, our expertise, and above all, our...

Easter Sunday

Good Friday Service Consider the cross, an ancient tool of punishment, torture, and death. The cross slowly and painfully ended the lives of its victims. In the process, they were shamefully abused, rejected and despised, humiliated before all passersby. And yet, in an astoundingly ironic reversal, the cross became the greatest symbol of Christianity, speaking of glory and victory! So, what brough...

Dan Schmidt writes in  Unexpected Wisdom : Tragically, hope is a weak word these days, meaning little more than what we feel... What of the one who has just learned of cancer in his child, or whose parents have developed a wasting disease, or whose job has been abruptly and callously terminated? ...when physical troubles and spiritual attacks stack up like cords of wood, what does hope mean then?...

In the book “What My Parents Did Right,” there is testimony from 50 known leaders from an earlier generation who describe the impact their parents had on their lives. Dr. Robert Webber, who wrote extensively on worship, shared the impact his father had on his life. One incident deeply impacted his life. Robert shares that, by attending Bob Jones University, he developed a bad attitude toward the s...

What impedes our spiritual life from flourishing and growing? With whom should we associate or disengage? To what degree should we relate to the society around us? What dangers do we need to guard our minds against regarding the values of a contaminated society? What may be even more subtle is watching out for deviations from the purity of the gospel that call forth disassociation from people who...

2 Peter 1

Erwin Lutzer, former Pastor of Moody Memorial Church, received a letter from a radio listener years ago, in which he wrote: ‘I am a man, thirty-one years of age and divorced, though I fought the divorce bitterly. I feel bad because I have no hope for the future.  Often, I go home from church and cry, but there is no one to hold me when I cry. No one cares. What hurts most is that I have begged God...

What does biblical ministry really look like? How can we identify the real thing? When do we know when something is authentic? We know that in life, we all will suffer. Some suffer more than others. Some suffer because of their own folly. But others suffer because of their concern for others. Paul, in appealing to the genuineness of his ministry and message, will give us insight into the authentic...

To begin anew in our lives, we need to begin to assess life differently. In our text from 2 Corinthians, we will discover three things we must do to experience God’s incredible grace in our lives.   How do we hit the reset button on our lives? What does it take to see a new beginning and transformation happen in our lives? We must stop evaluating life through the lens of our world. We need to acce...

Being a Christian is about having a passion for God and compassion for people. The greatest need of our nation, province, city, workplaces, schools, and neighbourhoods is that people come to know the Lord. God has entrusted His people with that commission. God entrusts us to be His witnesses, His ambassadors to the people in our world. So, how do we live a transformed and influential life? We begi...

There is much speculation and controversy between the moment we die and the time when Jesus comes again, in which we will receive our eternal spiritual bodies. In writing earlier to the Corinthians, Paul laid out the teaching on the resurrection in detail in 1 Corinthians 15. He also describes the difference between our earthly bodies and spiritual ones. 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 50-54 So will it be...

John Piper writes in his book The Roots of Endurance that he shared some of the challenges facing Charles Simeon (1759-1836), the pastor of Trinity Church in Cambridge, England. “I heard that he stayed in the same church as pastor for fifty-four years and that in the first twelve years there was so much opposition from his congregation that 'pewholders' locked their pews, stayed away, and forced h...