This is what covenant membership reflects. It is the visible, joyful, weighty declaration that we belong—to Christ, to one another, to the household of faith. It is a commitment not just to attend, but to invest. Not just to visit, but to build. Not just to exist, but to flourish as a people bound together by grace.
It’s always someone else’s fault. The timetable is to blame. The alarm clock conspired against you. Life’s circumstances teamed up to derail your spiritual growth. But let’s be honest—most of the time, it’s not external factors holding you back. It’s you.
Whether you’ve made a formal list of resolutions or not, as a Christian, you cannot faithfully enter into a new year without being resolved to be and to do certain things.
When you lose the elections in a historical landslide where the overwhelming majority vote one way, the reasons should be obvious.
It was late, dark, and quiet—the kind of quiet that made up every night before. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular night. I had prayed, locked the doors, and turned off the lights. The room was sealed like a tomb (as it always was), and I lay down, ready for the sweet mercy of sleep. But what came that night was something else entirely.
For members, submission to their elders fosters spiritual growth by cultivating humility, teachability, and a willingness to be shaped by God’s Word.
The Word of God does not come to us as a fragmented collection of spiritual tidbits for our devotional moments. No, it is a roaring fire, burning with clarity and authority over all of life. From the smallest whispers to the great rumblings of the world, the Bible speaks to every facet of human existence – and it does so with sufficiency, authority, and finality.
Alright, buckle up, because there’s no way to dive into this without getting into some nitty-gritty realities, a few practical examples – and any similarity between the examples below and actual people you know is strictly coincidental and entirely unavoidable.
We think that because our suffering is “lesser,” it should be ignored or shoved down. But the Bible knows nothing of such stoicism. This is no game of comparative agony; it’s a reminder that God’s mercy applies to the smallest inconvenience as well as the greatest tragedy.
For those of you who imagine Jesus as only ever gentle, soft-spoken, and infinitely tolerant, His words about Judas might come as a shock. “It
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