This past spring, I found myself struggling with sadness. No one had died recently. There were no tragic circumstances. I was just downhearted. I made the decision to methodically go through the book of Philippians.

Waiting can be a challenge, even for those who are in Christ, and even for those who have experienced a good outcome from previous times of waiting.

Job the wealthy landowner and Paul the bi-vocational itinerant preacher came to the same conclusion about accumulating riches.

We need a distraction. Almost every story about a surprise attack contains this line. Whether it’s a rescue operation or a hostile invasion, a well-timed distraction raises the odds of success.

Seventy years is a long time to be where you don’t want to be. But that was the situation the citizens of Judah found themselves in. Taken from their homeland, exiled to Babylon, for seventy years—which meant that some would never see home again.

“But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.” So wrote singer and songwriter Jim Croce in his hit single of the early 1970s, “Time in a Bottle.”

 We can’t settle for “low-energy” Christianity anymore. It’s time to pick up the pace and charge forward in faith. To win the 21st century, and to complete the Great Commission, we need a fresh surge of energy in the Christian movement, starting with you, putting your...

Jesus is looking for faith (Luke 8:22ff; Matthew 8:10, 22). The kind of faith that will believe big things and even pray big, holy, audacious prayers.

Being steadfast has nothing to do with self-sufficiency. In fact, steadfastness is only truly visible when it faces a headwind of adversity.

Imagine being in the circle of disciples the day Jesus spoke these words: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2–3 ESV).