"You can do this. You have a good reason to be here," I assured my 8-year-old self as I walked over to our neighbor's house. My family was new in town, and my brother Nick, who has never had any social anxiety, had rapidly made friends with the kids next...

I need to tell you about an incredible way the Holy Spirit is working in Argentina. A group of young people at a Seventh-day Adventist Christian church, San Miguel Centro, had something many young people today don't: real friendships. Genuine ones. However, this group of youth craved something more: they...

One of the most liberating truths I’ve learned in my life is this: If someone finds their relationship with God to be burdensome or anxiety-inducing, their picture of God is likely inaccurate. Trygve is a young man from Norway who recently came to this realization. He went from being a...

I was sitting in the Helsinki airport, bags packed, heart full, and body tired in the good way that comes after two weeks of teaching at ARISE Finland. I was headed home, but before I left, Mikael reached out. I told him I had a couple of hours before my...

I need to tell you about Donald and his fellow Bible worker, ​​Juan Moisés, who recently experienced something incredible. They were hiking through the pouring rain in the Cordillera Mountains of Costa Rica, heading toward a village inhabited by Cabécar people, the largest indigenous group in Costa Rica. Juan and...

I have to tell you about a young man named Patrick, a law student at the University of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has recently encountered the good news of the gospel in the most profound way. Patrick is the kind of person who burns hot for...

For my eighteenth birthday, my mom gave me a card that read, “I used to live each day as though it were my last. But people got tired of hearing me scream, ‘I’M GONNA DIE!!! I’M GONNA DIE!!!’ Hope your birthday’s a scream.” Funnily enough, that pretty much described the...

Dear Abraham, Kill your only son. God. Let's face it—that's a tough Bible story to swallow. At face value, it assaults the very idea that God is love. Or does it? New Testament scripture offers insight into this Old Testament mystery. John, for example, recorded a parallel of God’s call...

"We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us" (Romans 8:37). Whoever you are, whatever your struggles and temptations may be, sweet victory is yours for the taking. Right now! All you need do is appreciate, appropriate and act upon what already belongs to you in the person of...

“Ellen White said…” Those are three apparently innocent words that have been used and abused with much zest and confidence. They have been known to strike dread and incite rebellion in the hearts of some. But why? Is it in reaction to Ellen White’s message or because of what people...

It was a crisp winter day, and snow blanketed the quaint landscape surrounding me. Bright rays of light sparkled off the fresh snow that had fallen the previous night. Tall evergreens could be seen just about wherever one looked, and the rich smell of these majestic trees filled the air...

Elihu exemplifies one of the major reasons why we might not listen to what someone has to say about God. Young and obscure, Elihu presents a testimony that carries little weight among many intellectual greats. This may be one reason why God has employed farmers, shepherds, fishermen and even children...

There are traits and talents latent within you that can only be brought to active expression when you are in healthy, honest relationships. By remaining in destructive relationships, you are suppressing your unborn potential. I recently posted the above idea on my Facebook page. In response, a number of people...

The Bible is filled with agricultural symbolism as a means of depicting God’s grand and glorious purpose for humanity (Matthew 13). God is in the business of growing things—a new crop of humans, to be exact (1 Corinthians 3:6-8). Human beings, like a farmer’s crop, move through a growth process...

When it comes to metaphors of God’s love, Fathers often get the spotlight. They no doubt communicate God’s love in an irreplaceably unique way. But Scripture tells us that it takes both genders to understand the fullness of who God is (Genesis 1:27) and God actually compares Himself to mothers...

What does it mean to be comfortable in your own skin? What does that look like? I recently asked these questions to my youth Sabbath school class. We briefly remembered awkward adolescent stages of our lives in which we weren’t so comfortable and then pondered its definition in the word...

Once I began a sermon by asking the congregation to shout out the first thing that came to mind when they thought of the Second Coming. One guy yelled, “It won't be a secret rapture.” I like to think the goal in preaching the Second Coming shouldn’t be to merely...

Someone sent me a recent article by John Piper, Reformed Baptist preacher and best selling author, titled, Fierce Tornados and the Fingers of God. The opening sentence was as terrible to me as the tornados themselves: “Why would God reach down His hand and drag His fierce fingers across rural...