2023 // Issue 3
Criteria for Critics

Criteria for Critics

  Dan Glick For many of us, criticism comes all too easily, and I confess that I am no exception. While we indeed need to develop critical thinking skills, we do well to be on guard against becoming a critic who is constantly pointing out the wrong while we do little to build up the right. Someone has said that a critic is a person who never actually goes to the battle yet who afterward comes out shooting the wounded. Criticism that is not constructive has the power to create untold...

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Love Abounding

Love Abounding

G.D. Watson “And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more …” —Philippians 1:9 In this prayer of Paul for the Philippians, we have one of those panoramic views of the elements of a complete Christian. This word “love” is emphatically the love of God. The word agape is invariably used to express a divine affection imparted to the soul by the Holy Ghost; this is the love referred to in the text.  Previous to regeneration the soul may have various feelings toward God and Christ—of...

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Loving Our Neighbor

Loving Our Neighbor

Eric Himelick In a recent survey, 42,000 people were asked who or what was responsible for their coming to faith in Christ. While Church programs represented 2-3% and a pastor of a church 5–6%, the majority (75–90% of those responding) said that a friend or relative was God’s agent of change in their life. A lot of time, effort, and money goes into Christian programs, but how much time is spent developing friendships? A few years ago, my friend Bob Lupton who has worked in inner-city Atlanta...

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The Marks of True Christian Love

The Marks of True Christian Love

John Wesley Christian Perfection implies that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, treating all men with equity, charity, benevolence, and affection. Forgive them, bear with their weakness and errors, rejoice in their prosperity, lament their adversity, and in all possible ways contribute to their improvement and happiness to the extent of our knowledge and ability, and in consonancy with obligations to God and ourselves. It therefore excludes envy, for this regrets another’s talents,...

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The Essential Holy Spirit

The Essential Holy Spirit

Rick Jones Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” (John 3:5,6)  Jesus invited those who were thirsting, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit which they that...

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Whole-Hearted Love

Whole-Hearted Love

Curtis Going The scientific experts of the day had declared it to be impossible, but Wilbur and Orville Wright made history on December 17, 1903 when they successfully flew their homemade flying machine several hundred feet along the Atlantic coast in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina—defying the odds and setting in motion a chain of events that would forever change the way we travel the world. After the fact, the newspapers largely ignored their accomplishment, and the neighbors didn’t believe it...

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