Ask Pastor John

Paul and Peter charge Christians to use our spiritual gifts for the good of the church. But what if we don’t seem to have any spiritual gifts?

If God has given helpful skills to both believers and unbelievers, what makes the difference between a merely natural ability and a spiritual gift?

How can Christians live so that, at bottom, we can say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”?

Christ bids his people both to wisely get and freely give, and he supplies us with the grace we need to discern when to do what with our talents.

The death of Christ was no accident. He came to be crucified, that he might hang the sins and sufferings of those he loves with him there.

Christian love labors to overlook the sins of others, just as Christ went to the cross to forgive us, not to shame us.

Real differences exist between real Christians. But where we lack unity of conviction, we can share unity of humble, sacrificial disposition.

We ready ourselves to suffer well when we look our life dead in the eye and say with Paul, “I count it all as loss compared to Christ.”

When Christ died, so did our sin-loving selves. Now, God sends suffering to weed out the sin that lingers and stunts our joy in Christ.

Preachers are emissaries of God’s revealed truth. So how should we talk about parts of the text we don’t understand?