living the Gospel in an everyday world
Bill lives as a writer in Washougal, WA. He is also the President of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering world-class educational resources for equipping leaders in the local church, and Research Professor in New Testament at Western Seminary. Bill is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook Basics of Biblical Greek, Greek for the Rest of Us, and many other resources. Bill was also the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and is currently serving on the New International Version translation committee.
Once we have been properly oriented to God with “Our Father in heaven,” we move into the first half of the prayer. The focus here is on God. If I could revert back to my frequent illustration of hiking; it is easy when you start your hike to ask God for things for yourself. Did…
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Finally, as new believers learn to obey Scripture, they learn to trust it. Trust isn’t a decision. It is something earned over time. You can’t just trust the Bible. But here is the wonderful cycle that happens. You commit yourself to Jesus. You read his words, meditate on them, even memorize some of them, and…
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Many of us have convinced ourselves that we can no longer memorize; our memory banks are filled up. But we can remember locker combinations from High School, birthdays of second cousins, pithy bumper stickers, and every cruel word anyone has ever said against us. Our memory banks are just fine. But Satan does not want…
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Along with helping new followers of Christ read the Bible, we need to help them learn to meditate on it. Of course, for many CHristians, this means we ourselves have to learn to mediate on it. There are many times when Robin, my wife, will tell me things that take time to process. I need…
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In our series on helping new believers get started in the right direction, we have moved to what we can learn about God from what we read. But this information is not academic — it must lead to action. So what four things can we tell new Christians they should do with the Bible? The…
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There are four things that followers of Jesus believe about the Bible. I don’t have time to cover them in detail, but let me mention them and I’ll give you a website where you can learn more if you want. This is really important material. The Bible wants to become your guide, and you have…
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Last week we looked at “General Revelation,” what all people can know about God by looking at creation. In doing so, we read the first part of Psalm 19. But there is information about God available only to some people some of the time. It is available only to those who can read the Bible.…
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The purpose of this blog is to explore the question of what a new believer needs to understand in order to start his/her spiritual journey in the right direction. We’ve talked about what really happens at conversion, how the new path of discipleship is different, and what to do when we stumble (sin). The next…
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We have been talking about confession of sin, and I want to end by talking about the total joy of confession. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). God is a just God; he is perfectly righteous. And he is faithful to all…
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Let me share a few practical things I have learned about confession. It is, in a sense, a skill we all need to develop, whether we are new on the path of discipleship or a seasoned traveler. 1. Get it over with Confess early, confess often, confess fully. If you do not, the only person…
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