Church leaders talk a lot about discernment, but why is it so important and how do we know if we have it or not?

In the early 70s, a New York housewife had several visions of “Jesus.” He was apparently accompanied by two Hindu spirits who gave her instructions.

God calls us to an abundant life in him, but many of us seem to get tripped up on our past and the deep heart wounds that hide there.

A lot of people are at least passingly familiar with Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol. Very few have probably read the book, though, which is unfortunate since many of the finer nuances were cut out in translation to film.

The discussion around pornography frequently focuses on men, and women who struggle in this area are often left unacknowledged and wondering if they’re alone in their painful addiction.

At dinner with some friends and friends-of-friends, I turned to the woman beside me and asked what I felt was a fairly innocuous, get-to-know-you question. “So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an erotic romance author.”

Hearing people say that they believe in God but not the Bible or the church is common because a lot of what believers profess is…well, frankly, offensive.

I was at a fashion party and just felt empty,” Becket Cook said, describing his life as a set designer in fashion, bumping shoulders with supermodels and the socialite elite.

In God’s word, stories about women and instructions for women in the church can be disturbing for modern day ladies.

Women cannot speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

Women are to have a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4).

Women are to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24).

Women are saved by childbearing (1 Timothy 2:15).

One of the Ten Commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy, but modern society has chosen to ignore this with terrible consequences.

In 1793, the French revolutionaries decided to do away with the calendar as Europe had known it. They wanted a “rational” calendar not based on the state-church that had supported the royal family and supposed divine right of kings.

When we pray for healing, God sometimes cures someone; but sometimes he doesn’t, and we’re left with the question, “Why?”

When my father started college, he was still an unbeliever. He swung by his dorm room only to find a skinny guy on the other bed, reading a massive Bible that had so many highlighted passages that it looked like a stained-glass window.

Ignoring the “weirdo,” my father settled into college life.

God made people to operate best in families, whether we like it or not, but what happens when our families are not healthy?

Nicky Gumbel tells a story in one of his devotionals about a busy father who was looking after his daughter and trying to find a way to keep her entertained while he worked. He took a magazine page with a world map and cut it into pieces, creating a make-shift puzzle for his little girl.

In the internet age, vast numbers of believers are exposed and addicted to sexually explicit material, and the church has traditionally been silent on how they can find real freedom and healing.

Spencer B. Olmstead and his colleagues conducted a survey of young college students, asking them what they thought about pornography.

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

You probably have thalassophobia, though you may not use that word to describe one of the world’s most common fears.