Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1094. Bible apps have changed how most of us meet with Scripture each morning, and I think that change deserves more thought than a shrug and a download. I use a Bible app most days myself, so this is not a piece written from the safety of a leather-bound pulpit Bible looking down its…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11117. Fasting in secret is the standard Jesus sets for His disciples, and it is one of those instructions that sounds simple until you actually try to live it out among people who inevitably notice when you are not eating. Matthew 6:16-18 gives the clearest teaching on this question anywhere in Scripture, and it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1093. AI Bible study is something I get asked about often now, usually by people who are not sure whether using a tool like this on their Bible reading is clever stewardship or a shortcut around the very discipline that forms the soul. I do not come to this question as a technophobe. My…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1092. Meditating on Scripture is one of the oldest disciplines in the Christian life, and one of the most misunderstood, because the word “meditation” now carries associations that have very little to do with what the Bible means by it. When people hear “meditate”, many picture emptying the mind, sitting cross-legged, chasing a blank…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1091. Claiming verses is something I have watched sincere believers do in genuine faith, and something I have also watched leave people confused and hurt when the outcome they claimed never arrived. I understand the instinct. When life is hard, a promise like “I know the plans I have for you” feels like exactly…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1090. Scripture and prayer belong together so closely that I have never known a season of neglecting one that did not, sooner or later, weaken the other. I say this from experience as much as from study. There have been stretches of ministry where my Bible reading thinned out, and without my quite noticing,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1089. Scripture in counselling is where I keep returning whenever I sit with someone in pain, because the Bible speaks to the whole person, not only to their beliefs about God. I am not a trained clinical psychologist, and I refer people to good professional help when a situation calls for it. But as…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1088. Scripture in evangelism is not a set of proof texts we reach for after we have already made our own case. It is the message itself, and the power that makes the message land. I have shared the gospel in enough settings, from the pulpit to a hospital bedside, to know how tempting…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1087. Scripture in worship is not decoration set around the edges of a service. It is the very substance of what we say, sing and pray when a church gathers before the Lord. I have led enough services now to know how easy it is to let worship drift into a performance of moods…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11116. Fasting and health are not competing concerns, whatever the intensity of some fasting teaching can suggest. Your body was made by God and belongs to Him, and caring for it wisely while fasting is not a lack of spiritual seriousness. It is simply taking seriously another thing Scripture plainly teaches: that the body…