Reliable Truth

Today I'd like to share my Good Friday message I gave last weekend, focusing on Isaiah 53. It is interesting to note that chapters 40-55 of Isaiah have to do with what God will do in the future, yet Isaiah was written over 700 years before Christ even enters the scene. Many scholars contend that this is the best single chapter in the Bible to explain what will happen in Jesus' crucifixion....

Easter weekend is really different from all other weekends and holidays on the calendar. Because if you think about it, we’re commemorating two of the most significant events in all of human history. And of course, Easter weekend, I guess some would say, started last night on Maundy Thursday, but really, it starts in my mind today, on Good Friday, that somber day where we reflect on the Crucifixio...

How can we find real peace? Physician, futurist and author Richard Swenson 's work focuses on what he calls, “cultural medicine.” I’d never heard of that. He researches the intersection of health and culture. He looks at how culture impacts our mental, emotional, our psychological, and even our physical health. Interestingly, he wrote these words well before this current pandemic came along. L...

A couple of years ago, I noticed something in the Bible that I had never recognized, and in the book of John, whether you are aware of this or not, there are 21 chapters, and it dawned on me that the last 11 chapters, over 50 percent of the book of John, deals with really the last week of Jesus’ life. And then you have the Resurrection. I share that because in John chapter 11, we read of an incred...

Why did Jesus’ death change everything forever? What did He mean when He said, “It is finished?” Well, the answer glimmers all through scripture, but it’s packaged precisely in Romans 1:17, where the apostle Paul writes, “For in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, 'the righteous will live by faith.' F...

When Jesus speaks, everything He says that’s recorded in the Gospels is significant. Some of the things he says are parables, or stories with symbolic meaning. I am intrigued by these parables. Today I will dig into one of these parables, taken from Matthew 13:44-46. This message is from a weekly Bible study that I teach at The Center for Executive Leadership in Birmingham, Alabama.  Some of my Bi...

Today I'd like to share a message by Dr. Tim Keller , which he gave at The Center's Mens Breakfast in November 2019 here in Birmingham, Alabama. Tim's message draws some lessons from the early Church for us today and what we’re facing in our own culture, as the Christian church is declining. Increasingly, you have people out there who not only don’t believe in God or don’t believe in C...

Why is our world so broken? I believe the world is broken because of the spiritual condition of man. The Bible describes our natural condition as being in spiritual darkness. Tim Keller says spiritual darkness comes when we turn away from God as our true light and make something else as the center of our lives. In John 8:12 Jesus said, " I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk...

Throughout history, one of the intellectual debates that seems to come and go is this question, “ Is mankind intrinsically good or is he intrinsically evil or depraved ?” In fact, I think it would be interesting to hear the diversity of opinions then we might get from all those listening to this podcast. As we are experiencing many changes in our world today, I think it’s important to understand w...

Was Jesus more than a man in history? Was he just a great moral teacher? Great moral teachers don't make the kind of claims that Jesus made. Was he the Son of God? He claimed to be, so if he isn't actually the Son of God, then he was lying.  Whether we believe Christ was the Son of God or whether we don't, or whether we're not sure, I personally believe that every one of us should ask the question...

Back around 1984, I came to the conclusion that I had committed my life to a religious faith that had as it's source, a book. The Bible. A book that claimed in fact to be God's divinely inspired revelation to mankind. And though I had discovered personally that it was experientially true. I had to admit that the primary reason I believe that the Bible was God's Word is that, that I'd been told tha...

Have you given much thought to the big questions of life: Why am I here? Why do I exist? Author Peter Kreeft observed that, "We are the first civilization that does not know why we exist."  Author and pastor Tim Keller says this about our Western culture, "We're the first culture in history where men define themselves solely by performing and achieving in the workplace. And because of this," he sa...

Today I want to discuss the evidence I have found for the existence of God.  Christian author Tim Keller said, “Though you may not realize it, how we relate to God, either whether we believe in Him or whether we don’t believe in Him - it is the foundation of your thinking. Because it determines the way you view the world, whether you believe God exists or not, this belief is the foundation in whic...

Today I am going to address a very important question: Is Christianity the only valid religion, or are there other paths to God? As we live in this world full of religions and full of diversity, this question is going to continually come up.  Is it true, as some religions teach, that there is one God, but many paths to that God, or is Jesus the ONLY way to God? 

Today I’m going to tackle a very difficult topic - to tackle this in 45-minutes is difficult because of the nature of the content. If you read the book of John, there is a very important word that’s mentioned 27 times. And, yet, when you look at the other gospel books of Matthew and Luke, this word is rarely mentioned. This word is almost exclusively used by Jesus.  The word I am referring to is t...

In today's podcast I share about two different meetings with 2 different men, both who had some type of belief in God and Jesus, but they didn’t want Him to play an integral role in their lives. Clearly, there were certain barriers in their lives that kept them from coming to a legitimate faith.  What is it that causes men to keep God out of their lives? I wonder, how many of us, when it gets righ...

Today I want to continue discussing the relationship between wisdom and the principles of life. In Part 1 we discussed the Principle of the Path. In this talk I discuss 3 other principles that are crucial to leading a healthy life. You don't want to miss this! This is Part 2 of my 2-part series. I hope you enjoy it!    

We have a great need in the challenging days we are living in for wisdom. In today's talk, I want to introduce to you the relationship between wisdom and the principles of life. Principles are not good or bad - they are not moral. They are simply true. And what's important to know is that principles make life predictable. They give life order. Are you in need of order and peace in your life? This...

One of most enlightening things that I have learned this past year, especially when I counsel men, are some words from Blaise Pascal, who says this, “One of the primary reasons people struggle so much with life is because they have false ideas about reality.” We need to work on our perspective so that each of us will know how to have a strong foundation to weather the storms of life. I think it’s...

How do we view difficulty when it comes into our lives? In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at the issue of perspective, which is a critical part of having a strong foundation for life.  Pastor and best-selling author Tim Keller says, “We all have a basic motivational drive. Every human heart has something that drives them. It gets us out of bed and it gets us through life. It moves us to d...

How do we deal with fear, anxiety and stress in our lives? In Phillip Yancey’s book, Where is God When it Hurts . well-known Swiss physician Paul Tournier says, “Only rarely are we the masters of events in our lives, but we are responsible for our reaction to the event, to the events that come into our lives,” and he says, “what counts is the way a person reacts in the face of suffering, because w...

It’s the middle of the night. You know, you went to sleep, hoping for a good night’s rest, now it's 2 am. You get up and go to the restroom, come back and get in the bed, and all of a sudden, you start thinking about things. You don’t intend to, you just start thinking, and the next thing you know, you’re wide awake, and all these little mole hills in your life have become a mountain, then you can...

Merry Christmas! Today's podcast is taken a Christmas blog that I originally wrote several years ago. I share one of my favorite stories that illustrates the ultimate reason Jesus came into the world.  I hope that as we enter this Christmas season, and get caught up in the pageantry and celebration of His birth, that we would not forget that God sent His Son into the world, to rescue us from the d...

Are you experiencing real freedom in your life? Are you overspending this Christmas? In an attempt to give your family everything they could ever want, have you become a slave to a job that you hate? What is freedom anyway, because our wants are endless.  Today I share a story from Paul Harvey that reveals the one essential ingredient necessary to experience true freedom. Tune in now!

Now more than ever before, we need truth! In Hosea 4:6 , God says, “My people perish because of a lack of knowledge.” And then 2 Timothy 2:15 speaks of the importance of accurately handling the word of truth. And the reason Paul says is, it’s so easy to mishandle it. Today I'm looking at questions that people wrestle with as they consider the Christian faith. I was meeting with a guy yesterday, wh...