Kristina and I own a house together on a plot of land in the small town of Manheim. We also have four children who live in the house with us. Our house and land need to be maintained. There’s dusting, vacuuming, washing, sweeping, straightening, paying, filing, painting, building, repairing, replacing, trashing, tightening, mowing, watering, clipping, hauling, raking, blowing, shoveling, and on it goes. And this is just with our house and land. And we don’t even live on a farm which would...
Author - Jonathan Shirk
The world is confused about many things, not the least of which is marriage and sexuality. Why? The world does not know or submit to God. Romans 8:7 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” Many people set their minds on the flesh, often on several specific sections of the flesh, and their obsession with the flesh proves their hostility against God. They desperately need heart-transforming grace as we all...
Thankfulness is central to your Christian life. When you received Christ by grace alone through faith alone, the Holy Spirit was also given to you to produce the fruit of thankfulness in you and from you. Thankfulness is evidence of true faith. The thankfulness that the Spirit is producing in you will help you see and experience your marriage and sex differently. Discontent and criticism toward your spouse is cancer in marriage and the bedroom and the effective treatment is God’s grace and...
Are you confident that you are saved, that you have received God’s grace in Christ, and that you will forever enjoy God’s presence in heaven? Christians sometimes wrestle with the assurance of their salvation, however, God intends His beloved children to walk by faith in the joy and comfort of real assurance. I want you to have the joy of real assurance. Whenever you doubt your salvation, you should look to Christ in true faith believing the promises of God and resting in the security of...
This past winter I coached my daughter’s middle school basketball team. I loved the challenge. The girls were true beginners, but they worked hard and improved through the season. They learned the rules, the fundamentals, and how to play as a team. Fundamentals are laws that help players become successful on the court; the better you are at the fundamentals, the better you are at the game of basketball. When novices begin learning basketball, they usually display bad form when dribbling...
All the demands in life, including busy schedules, can sometimes pull us away from our family. So it is right and good to sometimes reevaluate our priorities and to focus on the family. Even more importantly, though, we should focus on Christ, for it is when we lose focus on him that our focus on other things, family included, becomes blurry. A careful focus on Christ brings perspective to everything else and helps us keep everything else in its proper place (or focus). So before we focus on...
The United States is becoming increasingly hostile to those who hold orthodox and historic Christian beliefs, at least that’s my impression. Christians in 2021, if they seek to follow Jesus honestly, sincerely, consistently, coherently, and faithfully, will be very different from the world around them. Very. If they blend in too much, they are not Christians, they are the world. It is easy for believers today to forget that Christians should be very different from the world. Perhaps one...
In the first century, the Pharisees took God’s good gift of the Sabbath and added to it so many ridiculous rules and regulations that it was no longer a blessing for God’s people; it became a burden (Matt. 12:1-14). What God meant to refresh His people had become a troublesome chore of remembering countless dos and don’ts which emptied the Sabbath of its delight. I think today the Church is more in danger of profaning the Sabbath than demanding too much on the Sabbath (demanding too...
We wake up in the morning. Perhaps we lay in bed awhile. We get out of bed, and we start our day. It is likely that most of us seldom contemplate our existence. You are likely settled on your own existence and the routine of life has likely lulled you into a certain unawareness of your existence. Of course you are aware that you exist and are alive. That’s not what I mean by “unawareness.” What I mean is that it is easy for us to forget, to simply not think about, the fact that we exist...
Election Day can bring a wide variety of emotions ranging from worry to anger to fear to apathy, especially when you need to wait for election results! The United States of America is arguably the greatest nation in the history of the world. It is not perfect by any stretch, but it provides freedoms and has achieved temporal good unlike any other. We can actually cast our vote to make our voice heard and to contribute to the electing of our political leaders. Then we wait for the results. As...