Mike’s Blogs

Paul said Jesus would grant honor, immortality, and eternal life to those who persevered in doing good (Rom. 2). James said the result for those who simply endured would be that they would "be made perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Is there a greater promise...

Are former, comfortable, “Christian” paradigms no longer fulfilling you? Do you have trouble finding peace in a world filled with chaos? Would you be willing to check out an entirely new way of thinking that holds the answers to these questions and more? Since John...

On Father’s Day, 1978, I was indeed a sinner saved by grace, and for over thirty years after that, I continued to believe it. Then I came to understand my new identity as a full-fledged, card-carrying citizen of the kingdom of heaven on earth! I came to understand the...

We all err at times. That doesn’t alter our identity. Remember, stumblings are temporary, but identity is who we are. Do you really think God is a half-full or half-empty cup sort? If half-empty, then explain the whole Jesus coming to earth thing. Do you think He’d...

As reactions to current political events clearly reveal, most churchgoers today see the kingdom of man as the concrete reality and the kingdom of heaven on earth as a kind of transcendent unreality. They see this life as their true experience and heaven as a place we...

Again, “repent”was the first of the nine words that changed everything because, where God is concerned, it is the first word that always changes everything. In the Greek it means to think differently, reconsider, or to change one’s mind or course. It’s a mind thing....

This God in Whom John tells us is light, no darkness at all (1 John 1) said, “I am the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity” (Isa. 45). This God of love and grace “has mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires...

Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I command…You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit” (John 15). The best way to do that, as with any endeavor in life, is to find people who do it well and emulate them....

We hang crosses as jewelry on chains around our necks and bracelets on our wrists, along with many who don’t know Christ at all. We affix them to our rooftops and on the walls behind our pulpits, sort of like a welcome mat put out to invite us into temple meetings...

On the one hand we might see the futility of trying to reach a God whose thoughts and ways are as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth (Isa. 55) that might make us want to quit before we start. But on the other hand, “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor....