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Following hard after God My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. Ps. 63:8 Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but a true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking and praying which may follow. We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put...

Holiness Is Not an Option! As he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." (1 Peter 1:15­16) YOU CANNOT STUDY THE BIBLE diligently and earnestly without being struck by an obvious fact - the whole matter of personal holiness is highly important to God! Neither do you have to give long study to the attitudes of modern Christian believers to discern that by and large we consider the expression of true Christian holiness to be just a matter of personal option: "I have looked it...

THE COMPLACENCY of CHRISTIANS is the scandal of Christianity. Time is short, and eternity is long. The end of all things is at hand. Man has proved himself morally unfit to manage the world in which he has been placed by the kindness of the Almighty. He has jockeyed himself to the edge of the crater and cannot go back, and in terrible fear he is holding his breath against the awful moment when he will be plunged into the inferno. In the meantime, a company of people exist on the earth who claim to have the answer to all...

Some time ago I came to realize that I did not love the people next door. They were, by any standards, dangerous and unpleasant people—ex-bikers who made their living selling drugs. They had never tried to harm my family, but the constant traffic of people buying drugs, a number of whom sat in the yard while shooting up, began to wear down my patience. As I brooded over them one day, indulging my irritation, the Lord helped me see that I really had no love for them at all, that after "suffering" from them for several years I would secretly...

“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, God will honor.” Jesus (John 12:26) In July, 2002, Dallas Willard spoke at the Washington, D.C. Servant Leadership School. In conversation over lunch one day, Gordon Cosby asked Dallas, “Why do churches and ministries so often lose the essence of their founding vision, to the point that the resulting institution, years later, is quite unlike the original dream? What happens along the way?” This essay is Dallas’s response to that question. We are grateful to him for his gift of words...

To Abide or To Abound? The disciple's dilemma: sit at His feet or serve in His name? By John Ortberg My daughter Mallory loves Greek mythology. I once bet her that she did not know the twelve tasks of Hercules off the top of her head. I lost. One of her favorite parts of The Odyssey is when Odysseus navigates a narrow passage with a lethal rock on one side and a fatal whirlpool on the other. Steering between Scylla and Charybdis has been part of our vocabulary ever since. In pastoral ministry I have my own Scylla and Charybdis...

True (and False) TransformationTwo counterfeit forms of spiritual maturity, and one way to find the real thing.by John Ortberg Hank had been a Christian for 50 years. By the time I came to pastor Hank's church, he was an old cranky guy. He had been a member there since he was a young cranky guy. Hank complained about his family, he complained about his job, and one day, he began to complain about the church's music. He stopped people in the church lobby—visitors, strangers—and said, "Don't you think the music in this church is too loud?" We sat him down...

If we are Christians simply by believing that Jesus died for our sins, then that is all it takes to have sins forgiven and go to heaven when we die. Why, then, do some people keep insisting that something more than this is desirable? Lordship, discipleship, spiritual formation, and the like? What more could one want than to be sure of their eternal destiny and enjoy life among others who profess the same faith as they do. Of course everyone wants to be a good person. But that does not require that you actually do what Jesus himself said and...

Interviewed by Andy Peck for Christianity + Renewal magazine, a United Kingdom publication, May 2002. Kingdom Living AP: In your first book, Spirit of the Disciplines, you pose the question "are we disciples of Jesus or merely Christians by modern standards?" Clearly you are concerned about the state of discipleship in the American Church. What alarms you most? DW: That the issue of discipleship is thought of as totally irrelevant to being a Christian which carries over to obedience to Christ’s teaching. The basic question ‘will I obey Christ ’s teaching?’ is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example,...

In the fall of 1999 a small group of Christian teachers gathered in retreat near Idaho Springs, Colorado to prayerfully reflect on the meaning and prospects of Christian spiritual formation today. With no human authority, but deep concern for the life of Jesus Christ in his people, and for the world-wide understanding of his Gospel, we sought for clear and helpful responses to several questions about spiritual formation that now confront us. Our hope is that these responses might serve to direct us in meeting the challenges of our day to profoundly Christlike being and living and in gaining maximum...

SUBVERSIVE INTERVIEW - DALLAS WILLARD PART 1 Dallas Willard has spent the best part of his life getting down to business. That has meant stepping down from a pastorate involved in trying to attract people to his church, and immersing himself into the culture around him armed only with a Bible and a desire to make his faith more real. Having spent over 30 years as a professor of Philosophy at USC, Willard has become known as something of a controversial figure in Christian circles. Not for any overtly radical teachings or practices, but simply because of his call for...