If you read the Gospels closely, you’ll notice something strange for short books that are supposedly biographies of a famous religious leader’s life. Namely, they each spend a...
In February 2011 I began an interesting journey. Through an odd series of twists and turns, I began teaching the information you hold in your hands.
At the time I was working at a nonprofit in my...
One summer I read Michael Ondaatje’s book The English Patient for a literature class I took at Baylor. Fittingly enough, I took this class as an elective during my first semester at...
One day the Pharisees and scribes found themselves frustrated with Jesus. Again.
“This man receives sinners and eats with them,” they said (see Luke 15:2 ESV, emphasis added)....
In every church there are at least three groups of people. I mean, yes, you could potentially categorize people an indefinite number of ways, but there are three subsets I want to review. In every...
I’ve thrown a lot of information your way during this series of talks. After writing about the gifts and after teaching about them in several environments for the past twenty years,...
I remember going to see Nana and Pop when I was a kid. Seems like every time we visited their home, Pop was sitting in his den watching NASCAR when we arrived.
I couldn’t ever get into...
We’ve covered a lot of ground— far more than I imagined we’d cover when I first envisioned this book project. In the previous talk I offered you six reasons why we have...
Now that we have solid understanding of what the gifts are (and even what they’re not), let’s talk about why we have them. In this chapter I’ll outline six reasons I believe...
To understand the gifts more, it’s helpful to outline what they are— like we’ve done in the previous two talks (here and here). By now, you probably recognize where you’ve...
In the previous talk we referenced 1 Corinthians 12:1-7. That passage helped inform our definition of the gifts.
In his next few lines, Paul provides us with a short list of some of the...
Something perplexed me for several years after I became a Christian. I was taught that our spiritual gifts were a result of our “second birth.” I still believe that to be true.
...
