I have been blessed to experience some of the greatest worship there has been in our lifetime, but we have lost that by letting our devotion to worship eclipse our devotion to the Lord. Several times I have been distracted from the River of Life by the great tributaries that feed it. 

         Consequently, I have been cautious and watchful for any tendencies to do this again. At the same time, I am resolved to seek the highest worship and koinonia I have been blessed to experience. We are called to walk in...

          The Scriptures make it clear that walking in new covenant church life is required to walk in the new covenant, as we see in texts like I John 1:7: “If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship [koinonia] with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

         Though this verse does not necessarily address our redemption for trusting in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, it does talk about walking in the new covenant. Many do have a genuine salvation experience when they trust...

         We can be assured when we seek God, He is not boring and where we find Him will not be boring. If our church life is boring, we can be sure we got off track somewhere, and our focus is not on the right place. 

         The encounters God had with His people in Scripture are the most exciting and interesting portions of Scripture. They also brought radical change to those who experienced them. If we are truly meeting with God in our services, they will not be boring, and we will...

     What I proposed in last week’s Word for the Week is contrary to the way most churches are being built today, but are any of those ways working? Granted, there are some outstanding churches in our day, but are any of them even remotely like the one we read about in the New Testament? Are any so full of the manifest presence of the Lord that we know we will encounter Him when we go there?

     Nothing is as interesting as our Creator, and nothing is as exciting as following Him. How can His church, which is...

         As we continue considering what the perfect church might look like, we should expect a vision for the perfect church to be as varied as the people who are in it—that’s how it should be. We may wonder how anything could be built with everyone having different ideas about what it should be, yet this is still far better than what we call churches today. We know this because God’s plan for building His house is much like He created the universe.

         It is only when we begin to acquire the mentality of “unity by...