First, a brutal confession: In high school, I didn’t care about the Bible. I cared about Jesus, but I saw him as a distant Savior who helped only when things went terribly wrong. If I needed Jesus to hear me, I’d read his Word because I thought that would make him happy—and when Jesus was pleased with me, he’d be more likely to answer my prayers.…
In Sunday school, I remember singing at the top of my lungs, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.” Such songs allowed my imagination to take me into Scripture.…
Our primary authority for living a Jesus-Centered life is the Bible, a long book written in two languages thousands of years ago by dozens of people throughout hundreds of year. Good luck making sense of all that! But if we want to deepen our trust in Jesus and our understanding of God, ourselves, and humanity, there’s no greater resource.…
People who work in youth ministry often struggle with the concept of rest. There’s always kids to Facebook or text, phones buzzing, paperwork to do, trips to plan, parents to calm, meetings to attend, and people to see. These things are necessary, yet many youth workers, their spouses and churches don’t schedule times of rest and Sabbath amidst all the chaos.…
