First Thoughts

Ever since I learned I was going to be one, I’ve been thinking a lot about grandparents. My excitement over my grandchild in a few months is verging on obsession. My daughter and I have always been very close, and I am looking forward to the wonderful new things that will come to our relationship with the addition of her child and my grandbaby. But over the years, I’ve been aware of many strained relationships between parents and the grandparents of their children. I have seen the birth of a ne…

A Common Problem When was the last time you told someone that you were busy? If you are like most of us, you need only think back a few hours or a couple of days at most. A friend at church asks, “How was your week?” You respond, “It was good. Just busy, busy, busy.” Your spouse sends you a text, “How’s your day going?” You text back, “So busy.” Your child says, “Look at my drawing.” You reply, “Just one second. I’m busy.” A family member calls and asks, “Would you like to come over for dinner…

Prayer is hard. Christians know they should pray, but many have a complicated relationship with it. For some, prayer lives in the background of a busy life. The hectic pace of work or family pushes prayer to the periphery. These Christians often feel guilty about prayer. A convicting sermon or conversation leads them to try harder. They make a list, get up earlier, and try to follow the ACTS model (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication). But before long, their list is missing, t…

Have you heard it said that someone is “too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good”? Perhaps that’s true of someone, but I’ve never encountered that person. I think that the opposite is often the case for most of us. We don’t think enough about heavenly realities but instead focus too much on what we can see in the here and now. However, the Bible actually commands us to think about heaven. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.” O…

How Can God Exist When the Evidence is Against Him? Answering atheism can seem like a daunting task. If you do any amount of Google searching about the evidence surrounding God’s existence, you’ll find page after page of atheists claiming to have proof that God isn’t real. They’ll cite studies about the ways our brains work, about social constructs that were generated as coping mechanisms, about new data from physics and chemistry that seem to indicate that the universe created itself or is jus…

Both the downtown campus and Nocatee had exciting weeks of Glow Camp. Over 700 kids and students came together to hear God’s Word and learn to win the ultimate race. Jesus Christ has saved us through his life, death, and resurrection, and he enables us to grow into spiritual maturity. We want our kids never to give up and to serve the Lord with all their hearts! “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” 1 Corinthians 9:2…

On Sunday, July 21, at First Baptist, I announced that my young, unmarried daughter is pregnant. I love my precious girl more than I can communicate in words and would have preferred to keep this information private. However, the nature of my ministry means that the consequences of her private sin will be more public than it would be for most young women in her situation. I am sharing this information with the approval of her and the rest of our family. We all know that in short order, the natu…

Gentle parenting is a topic that inspires not much gentle debate. There’s actually a lot of disagreements out there about this. I have had, in the last week or so, an unusual number of people asking me about this. I don’t intend to do it full justice. I often remind you that we try to keep this around 10 minutes and so I can’t say everything; all I’m going to do here is have the very, very modest goal of pointing in the direction of what gentle parenting is, and given a few biblical thoughts ab…

In 2016, I did not vote for Donald Trump. I didn’t vote for him because I knew he was lying. Listening to candidate Trump promise protections against the unborn and pledging to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court, I was convinced conservatives were being played. I didn’t believe for a minute that he would make good on his promises. I could not have been more wrong. In the years that followed the election, I watched Donald J. Trump be the most aggressively pro-life president in my…

Atheists are a small minority. They make up for about 3% of the population of our country. So why bother? Why should Christians take the time to learn a thing or two about the small percentage of atheists in our country? My goal is to show you that atheism is not something to be ignored and answering atheism is not a mere intellectual exercise. And I’m going to do that by sharing 5 reasons Christians need to answer Atheism. 1. We answer to speak truth in a world drowning in lies. While atheists…