Continuing with the commission to make disciples and connecting it with how spiritual authority is founded upon love, one way we will know who we are called to help disciple is by a love that God gives us for them. If I don’t feel a special love for a person, I won’t try to disciple them. I will consider that God has called someone else to help them. The same is true of nations.

     I do not go to a nation just because I receive an invitation. I only go after God has given me a...

     The Christian disciplines, such as daily reading of the Scriptures, prayer, worship, witnessing, etc., are all crucial for a healthy, balanced Christian life. While we should never neglect these disciplines, they alone are not enough. In the Scriptures, we find that experiences, encounters with the Lord and even angels, changed people more radically and propelled them toward their destiny far more than any amount of study could have done.

     Many foolish ones do not do anything but wait for such encounters. We cannot neglect study and the other basic disciplines, because they prepare us for the...

     Last week we discussed how Jesus prayed in John 17 that the love the Father had for Him would be in us. If I had time here, I believe I could biblically prove that the love of the Father for His Son and the Son’s love for the Father is the greatest power in all of creation and is personified in the Holy Spirit. The ultimate experience, fulfillment, or ecstasy that we could ever feel is this love. When we touch this love, it will overflow into a true love for everything and everyone, even our enemies. This...

     When the Lord felt compassion for the sheep without a shepherd, He became their Shepherd. When He felt compassion for those who lived in darkness, He became their Teacher. All true spiritual authority is founded upon love. We will know the place of our calling and destiny when we know God’s love has been shed abroad in our hearts.

     Because God created us before the foundation of the world, He is the One who put within us the desires of our hearts. Jesus taught that living water comes from the “innermost being” or the heart. Therefore,...

      The immature and unstable tend to see and act in extremes. Granted, there are extreme truths. To see them and walk in them means you will be acting in an extreme way compared to others. However, those who cannot see anything but extremes are usually the most deceived of all. The path of life is almost always found between extremes.

      The ditches on either side of the path of life are almost always legalism on one side and lawlessness on the other. Some will take virtually every truth to one of these extremes. Many...