Is the gospel simply the doorway to Christianity? Or the whole of it? We need to make the gospel the binding of our lives.

Getting seasick is truly a miserable experience. How can Christians avoid “spiritual seasickness”—being thrown about by every wind of doctrine?

With the gospel as our backdrop, we need to engage discernment as whole people. God created us with minds, souls, and bodies. When we only engage one of these, our discernment is lacking. It’s weakened because we’re only engaging part of us, rather than our entire selves.

Can a friendship last even if you strongly disagree on theological points? Yes, and it should—because it will sharpen both of you.

I’ve known for a long time that I don’t like change. Over the past few years, I’ve recognized my unhealthy grasping for control over people, weather, health, and other realities I can’t possibly sway to my liking. But it wasn’t until the past year or so that I reckoned how much changes of mind rattled me—both in others and in myself.

I say my husband and I found healing in an unexpected place to us—because in our pride, we assumed real healing could only come from those who agreed with us.

Sometimes, suffering will be a reckoning with our doctrine. It will appear as hopeless laments. Sometimes there may even be questions and doubts. But God is still there.

Do you wonder why God never speaks to you? Pastors, conference speakers, mentors, and friends all hear from God. But all you hear is the humming of your dishwasher. You never feel any nudges or hear any whispers. Maybe you’re starting to wonder if God loves you less.

A book review of Zach Keele’s book, The Unfolding Word. The Unfolding Word seeks to help us see how the entire Bible unfolds as one unified story held together by the gospel.

Have you ever sat across from a friend and felt your theological disagreements strike up between you like a jagged fence? Perhaps it felt like a crack in the foundation of your friendship, and your heart ached a little—from wonder at how she disagreed with you to fears of losing your friend. How do we move forward?

Discernment is the skill of seeing what is right from almost right. It’s the ability to recognize the truth about God and the gospel and recognize when it’s skewed. It’s one thing to do that for ourselves, it’s another to guide our children through it as well. It doesn’t need to be burdensome and fearful—rather, it can be rewarding and restful for the believer.

As believers, we often give ourselves to things that can’t change us. Too often, we mix up the tender relationship between the law and the gospel. And just like my failed attempt at mastering water intake, when we confuse law and gospel it leads to frustration as well as discouragement.

We often struggle in our relationships with believers we disagree with. What if it’s because we’re hanging on so tightly to our disagreements that we are unwilling to find a peaceful place to stand together? How do we learn to stand on the peaceful grounds of the gospel together despite our differences?

Rich theology with it’s complex history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans. What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study, question-asking, and many books from a variety of libraries to understand, others today can learn in thirty minutes listening to a podcast or two minutes scanning an article. While there are good things to be taken from these, I wonder if we’ve forsaken anything for them.

False teachers are everywhere. How do we grow in discernment to know truth from error? First we must lay a foundation. Here’s how.

Just as the Old Testament saints and the Early Church had to watch closely for false teachers among them, so we still do today. We can’t rely on our pastors, mentors, teachers, or favorite bloggers to tell us who is false and who isn’t. We need to be equipped to discern for ourselves. Here’s how.

In the same way that you shouldn’t diagnose yourself with Google, I don’t want you to learn your theology from me. I don’t mind being your starting point or launching pad, but don’t make me your final authority. There are better sources out there than me.

Theology is easier to articulate in articles, books, and journals than it is lived out. It’s one thing to claim that God is sovereign, and it’s another to see him take away and find a way to praise his name. Learning theology comes in two parts. There’s the time in the classroom (or on the couch with a good book) and there’s the time of living it out.

“If only I had [fill in the blank], then I could obey God better”? If only I had more time, friends who were more present, family members who weren’t so trying, a pet that wasn’t so needy, improved health, or the like roll through our minds. We forget that sin permeates all of our lives, not just where we’re lacking.

My dear sister who loves theology, I must ask: Has this knowledge and theology changed you yet? Has your abounding comprehensionfound its way to your heart so as to shape your life? Do the words you speak, the thoughts you think, the actions you commit represent the information in your mind?