There is perhaps no doctrine of the Bible that has been attacked with greater subtlety yet vehemence than the doctrine of the deity of Christ—the indisputable fact that Jesus Christ is God and very God.

As a newbie to Mission Focus, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The reality is that it was exactly what I needed as a pastor to bring the totality of the Mission into clear Focus. I was able to witness firsthand the culmination of evangelism, discipleship, ministry training, and church planting. I heard personal testimonies of people who were won to Christ through evangelistic Bible studies. People were open and excited about being involved in discipleship. We celebrated those graduating from LFBI. Andew Ong was ordained into the pastoral ministry. Missionaries from all over the world were prayed over and supported. And many surrendered their lives completely to the Mission. 

God loves the nation of Israel, and he has been working for thousands of years to draw her into a holy and loving relationship with himself. He is by no means finished with the Jewish people. What God promises, he fulfills.

Whether your church implements an explicit directory of members or not, God calls you to the highest devotion to your local church body and its individual members. Implementing a definitive church membership appears to be both biblically sound in light of scripture’s teachings for the church and practically effective to the needs of our people.

Jesus is always leading his disciples to listen, learn, and live his word, and he is always leading the multitudes to a point of decision. Are they going to choose to count the cost to become a disciple or not?

The reality of hell is that God loves all of us, but not all of us love God back. Not all of us accept his love, and God will not force that love upon us, because love is not love if it is coerced. 

If you really think the local church is that bad, that hurtful, and that harmful to the cause of Christ (and some churches truly are), then love the Lord Jesus Christ enough to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

Since the Spirit of God told us that “evil men and seducers” would “wax worse and worse,” we have to ask ourselves: just how many false teachers and seducers must there be in the world 20 centuries later?

As I’ve told my son, “We look forward to sitting in your home someday, with your family, and being able to enjoy that experience.” We will not be there to coach, counsel, or consult. We will be there to laugh, love, listen, and learn!

The danger of a Christian identifying themselves as deconstructionist is that it assumes that there is a greater responsibility to take your faith system apart than there is to build it up.

When we understand that Satan’s purpose is to oppose God and assert himself as god in the place of God, then we clearly see his opposition and adversarial nature in everything in our world.

Studying the Bible with others is one of the greatest gifts we have as believers. It is a privilege that we get to open God’s Word together, speak and cry out to the Father together, grow in love together, and look for ways to seek out the lost together. But we can only do this rightly if our groups are biblically healthy and mature.

One of the greatest evidences for the preservation of scripture is the principle of the three applications. What other book can have three applications in one passage? Only God’s word can do that.

Early on in my discipling, I found it very sobering that counseling scenarios were landing on my desk instead of the pastor’s! As comforting as it would have been for me to have them go the pastor at that time, I realized that, as the teacher in the discipleship relationship, I had to trust God for wisdom in the moment to properly minister to the disciple.

The goal for student ministry shouldn’t be random, spin-the-bottle, haphazard teaching. It should be intentional. We are training teens to be adults and raising them in their faith in the Word.

The last century of American history is a story of contradiction that resulted in a false sense of holiness within Christian culture. How do we transcend those models and come back to true holiness, the holiness described is scripture?

The problem with the post-tribulation rapture teaching. is that it causes us to look at the mountain rather than the Mountain Mover…. I’m not looking for the tribulation; I’m looking for my Saviour

Culturally, the office of deacon is often misapplied and mispracticed in churches today. The qualifications to hold the office of deacon convey that this is an office of great significance. The question to be answered is, “What is the role of the deacon?”

There is nothing of greater eternal value than the precious investment of the word of God into the souls of men. If youth ministry is meeting any other end than this, I would argue it is straying from legitimate biblical ministry.

In a word, it is the work of local churches to reproduce local churches all over the world. Anything short of that is a compromise.