The greatness of God is most clearly displayed in his Son. And the glory of the gospel is only made evident in his Son. That's why Jesus' question to his disciples [in Matthew 16] is so important: "Who do you say that I am?"

The question is doubly crucial in our day, because [no one is as popular in the U.S. as Jesus]—and not every Jesus is the real Jesus. …

There's the Republican Jesus—who ...

Highlights from a 2008 Harris Poll nation-wide survey of 2,126 U.S. adults:

• Americans who believe in God: 80 percent (unchanged since the last survey in 2005)
  
  
• Americans who believe Jesus is the Son of God: 71 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the resurrection of Jesus: 70 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth: 61 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the survival of the soul after death: 68 percent
  
  

My first visit to a health club was in the 1970s. Health clubs were new. My friend Frank told me he had a membership and that I could come with him as his guest for a workout.

When I met Frank at the club, we went into a room filled with weight machines. I'd never seen these things before in my life. Frank called it "the circuit." The idea was to spend a few minutes on each machine, exercising all ...

New in Town tells the story of Lucy Hill (Renee Zellweger), a high-powered consultant in love with her upscale Miami lifestyle, who is sent to New Ulm, Minnesota, to oversee the restructuring of a blue-collar manufacturing plant. When she's ordered to close down the plant and put the entire community out of work, Lucy is forced to reconsider her goals and priorities. Upon arrival in New Ulm, a frigid ...

I was traveling on a plane from San Francisco to Los Angeles a few years ago. I was sitting next to the window, reading a Christian book. The man next to me, obviously from the Eastern hemisphere, asked, "Are you a religious man?" "Well, yes," I said. "I am too," he responded. We began talking about religion. In the middle of the conversation I asked, "Can you give me a one-liner that captures the ...

Most kingdoms do anything they can to protect their king. This is the unspoken premise of the game of chess, for example. When the king falls, the kingdom is lost. Therefore, the king must be protected at all costs. Another notable example comes from the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill desperately wanted to join the expeditionary forces ...

Based on a book by Francine Rivers, The Last Sin Eater is set in Appalachia in the 1800s. When Welsh immigrants settled in America, they brought along an ancient Celtic ritual known as "the Sin Eater." When someone within the community died, the Sin Eater would come and absolve the deceased person by eating a symbolic meal—often comprised of bread and wine—that was set alongside the corpse. ...

Stuart Briscoe, author and long-time pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, tells the following story:

Many years ago, during the Cold War, I traveled to Poland for several weeks of itinerant ministry. One winter day my sponsors drove me in the dead of night to the middle of nowhere. I walked into a dilapidated building crammed with one hundred young people. I realized it was a unique ...

Sometimes the uniqueness of the revealed Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ is seen most clearly when contrasted with other spiritual beliefs.

Lauding the Dalai Lama as one of the world's 100 most influential leaders, author Deepak Chopra wrote in Time magazine:

The most inspiring thing [the Dalai Lama] ever told me was to ignore all organized faiths and keep to the road of higher consciousness. ...

At the end of his sermon on Isaiah 9:6, Ken Langley, pastor of Christ Community Church in Zion, Illinois, shared this powerful thought about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, juxtaposed with the story of Aragorn in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, the final book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy:

The emotional power of [Isaiah 9] lies not only in the Messiah's titles, but in their cumulative ...