We throw the word "love" around constantly. We love our favorite restaurants. We love a good movie. We love our sports teams. But somewhere in all that casual usage, the word has lost its weight. It has been stretched so thin that it barely holds together anymore. And when we talk about love in the context of faith, in the context of how we are supposed to treat other people, including the difficult ones, we need to go back to the source and ask a harder question: what does love actually mean?  Read More

There is a question worth sitting with for a moment: Are you affected by the outside world? Your first instinct might be to say no. Many people would answer that way. But consider a few simple follow-up questions. Have you ever had a sunburn? Have you ever stubbed your toe? Were you affected by wildfire smoke drifting through the air last summer? The outside world touches us constantly, whether we acknowledge it or not. And if that is true physically, how much more true is it spiritually, morally, and mentally?  Read More

There is a moment most people recognize, even if they have never had a name for it. It is the moment when someone who once mattered to you decides, based on a single word, a single action, or a single failure, that you no longer matter to them. The door closes. The calls stop. The relationship dissolves. In our current cultural moment, this experience has become so common that we have given it a label: cancel culture.  Read More

There is a question that cuts right to the heart of what it means to be human, to be mortal, to be standing before a holy God: Do you need to be perfect in order to have eternal life?  Read More

There is a particular kind of grief that does not announce itself loudly. It settles quietly in the chest, surfacing in unguarded moments when a familiar face comes to mind and you are reminded, again, that this person you love does not know Jesus Christ as their Savior. It is a grief without a clear remedy, a sorrow that cannot be fixed with a casserole or a phone call or a donation. And yet it is one of the most spiritually significant emotions a believer can carry.  Read More

Picture yourself sitting in a defendant's chair. The charges against you are not minor infractions or technicalities. You are on trial for every sin you have ever committed against God — every harsh word spoken in anger, every moment of cruelty toward a family member or neighbor, every wrong deed carried out and every good deed deliberately left undone. The weight of the charges is suffocating. You look around the courtroom and realize the situation is even more dire than you imagined.  Read More