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Three Ways to Save Money on a Disney Trip

Disney World can be expensive…but it doesn’t have to be. You can take a trip there on the cheap or splurge like you’ve got Scrooge McDuck kind of money. A few choices can help you save big.

A Tale of Two Citizens

History revolves around two people: Adam and Jesus. Whereas Adam is the representative for all of humanity by birth, Jesus is the head of a new humanity through adoption. Paul sets up the individuals Adam and Christ as representative, corporate figures to show we’re all held accountable on behalf of someone. [1] None of us are the autonomous island we imagine. Every person is either still lost in Adam or, by God’s amazing grace, they are now found in Christ (the 2^nd Adam). We are either citizens of this world’s kingdom through Adam or citizens of heaven through Christ (1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49).

Three Identity Markers in Colossians 1:1-2

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” (Colossians 1:1–2)

Imagine you meet someone tomorrow and they ask you to describe yourself. What would you say? Who are you? Try summarizing who you are in ten words or fewer (really, try it).

Continue reading Three Identity Markers in Colossians 1:1-2

The Great Exchange: Sorrow for Joy

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)

By taking our sin, Jesus faced the unimaginable sorrow of absorbing the Father’s righteous, just wrath. At the cross, Jesus was rejected for us so that we might be accepted in him. There was also the pain of being betrayed, not just by the creatures he made, or even his own people, but also by one of his disciples. But the Bible (and Isaiah 53:4) also connects the grief and sorrow of Jesus specifically to the sin he bore for us. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And then Galatians 3:13, Paul adds, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

Holy Week Reading Plan & Resources

Today begins what the Church has called Holy Week or Passion Week. The time from Palm Sunday to Easter (Resurrection) Sunday has provided Christians with a week to give special attention to the person and work of Christ. It interrupts our normal rhythms and intentionally puts Jesus before us so we can reflect on the events leading up to and including his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. Below is a reading plan for the week, as well as activities and resources to help you leverage this significant week in the Church Calendar.

Continue reading Holy Week Reading Plan & Resources

The Father’s Love in Adoption

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the prior posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love
God’s Love in Revealing Himself
The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

I’m thankful for the forgiveness of sin, the removal of condemnation and punishment, and the promise of eternal life in a resurrected body. I’m thankful I don’t have to carry guilt and shame because Christ took it away. But of all the blessings we have in Christ, there is none greater than being adopted by God so that we become his beloved sons and daughters. J. I. Packer states that adoption is “the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification…. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.”[1]

The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

There are many proofs of God’s love scattered throughout the pages of Scripture. We notice further testimony of God’s loving kindness in his mercy and gifts both in creation around us and in our lives every single day. But there is no greater demonstration of God’s love than in the Father sending his only Son to save us. If the evidences of God’s love were a mountain, with new discoveries and greater examples of his love unfolding as we climb higher and higher in the knowledge of God, at the very top would still be the costliest, most needed, and most valuable of all gifts ever given: Jesus. The gift of Jesus includes not just that he was sent (incarnation) but that he was sent with the mission of a dying on the cross in our place, taking the punishment we deserved.

God’s Love in Revealing Himself

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the first two posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love

One of my favorite things to do with my four-year-old daughter is enjoy a dessert together—or get a treat, as she calls it. Whether it’s ice-cream, a good cookie, or a donut, we bond as we talk, laugh, and savor the sweets. She’s recently been asking me to tell her stories about myself. It’s partly because she just likes to hear stories, and it’s partly because she gets to know me by the things I share. Whether it’s through these stories, in everyday conversation, or over the course of time as she sees what I’m like she desires to know me. All children desire this.

Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love

Before discussing what God’s love looks like—and I’m looking specifically at how God loves us with as our father—I want to briefly consider a few reasons why “love” might lack clarity or even be unhelpful today.

Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love

It can be difficult to grasp God’s love for us. For many, the love of Jesus comes through loud and clear, but God the Father often seems distant or looming. God’s attributes—including love—aren’t like human traits that strengthen or weaken nor are they like moods that come and go. God is all of his attributes perfectly, all the time. And yet, we still struggle to believe it can be true, that this great God can love us messy and stumbling sinners. Sometimes we don’t feel his love on a day-to-day basis like we desire, so walls of doubt begin to shut him out. Other times we unwittingly read the Word not through the lens of his love and grace to us in Christ, but through tinted lens of condemnation and guilt.