Bi-vocational ministry is a strategic and challenging call. Danny Ovalle, a bi-vocational pastor in New England, recently joined us to talk about the rationale and practice of serving as a pastor while supporting his family with an additional job.

The central passage about compensation for ministers, or lack of compensation, is found in 1 Corinthians 9:1–18. This apostolic precedent, along with particular contexts and practical concerns, forms the foundation for why bi-vocational ministry could be a wise option.

In this ministry-angled episode of Theology Refresh, Danny talks about what it’s like to live and work among his people at the First Church of Christ, a congregation that began in …

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Does your speaking and writing have authority?

It does if you are tapping into the authority of the Bible.

John Piper recently addressed the students and apprentices at Bethlehem College and Seminary with a simple and earnest plea: write and teach as reliable spokesmen. He encourages Christian thinkers to scrutinize their thoughts by apostolic authority and to articulate them with precision.

Stream or download the message, “How to Give the Bible Functional Authority in Your Speech and Writing.”

Irritability isn’t that big a deal, is it?

Although we’re prone to believe it’s a lesser sin, Phil Ryken explains that irritability is actually a way of hating because it is “a way of non-loving.”

In his book, Loving the Way Jesus Loves, Ryken connects Paul’s teaching that “love is not irritable” with a positive example from Jesus’s life. The portrait of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is perfectly displayed in Jesus, and non-irritable love is one of his perfections.

The apostle Paul suffered. Did he ever.

He was imprisoned. He was beaten, often near death. He took 195 total lashes from his Jewish kinsmen on five occasions. He took three pummels with rods. He was once stoned — and then also shipwrecked three times. Then there are the endless dangers of travel in the first century, plus countless other experiences mentioned and unmentioned in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 11:21–33).

It doesn’t take long until we wonder how in the world he did it. How did he take so much pain? So much loss? How did he prepare for suffering?

The answer is in Philippians 3:7–8.

Counting Everything As Loss

In the 1992 sermon “Called to Suffer and Rejoice: That We Migh…

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Deception works by making you think that there is more joy apart from gospel-shaped community. It makes sin feel more attractive than a righteous commitment to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And one way we war against this, says John Piper, is by being a truly glad people, like in 2 John 1:4.

He explains, “The devil doesn’t have a hook in happy Christians, just miserable Christians who are looking for an alternative pleasure.”

This excerpt is taken from the most recent sermon, “Life Together at the End of the Age.”

Related resources:

• The Works of the Devil: Overcome by Christ (1984 sermon series)

• “Resist the Devil!” (1989 sermon)

• Watch Out or the Devil’s Gonna Get You

Lecrae wants you to see reality from a unique perspective. This is his intention in the Grammy Award-winning album, Gravity.

Exhibit A is the song “Mayday,” featuring Big K.R.I.T. and Ashton Jones, which demonstrates the clash of two different worldviews. Initially you hear the general outside world’s perspective on faith followed by Lecrae speaking as a rescued sinner: “when I look at Jesus, he lived the life I couldn’t, suffered for my crime so I wouldn’t.”

He explains more in this two-minute video:

Related videos from Lecrae:

• Music video for “Mayday” (featuring Big K.R.I.T. and Ashton Jones)

• Lecrae Explains True Manhood

• Lecrae Raps the Gospel in One Minute

A kid in Colorado with male genitals is prohibited from using the girls’ bathroom.

That’s the straightforward backstory on a recent piece from Donna Rose, a transsexual journalist writing her opinion for CNN. A Colorado school district has decided that a six-year-old child with male anatomy should use the boys’ bathroom at school, or a private one, Rose reports. Rose decries the school’s decision as discrimination because the child apparently has a deep sense of being a girl.

This six-year-old child, Rose writes,

knows she’s a girl. She dresses as a girl. Her legal documents recognize her as a girl. Her parents accept her as a girl. On the playground, you would have difficulty identifying…

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Achilles was a vicious warrior with a complicated history. In Homer’s Iliad we see him rise to the top as the preeminent player at the end of the Trojan War. His full backstory is melodramatic enough to make Downton Abbey blush, but suffice it to say that no one was quite like him. Achilles was simultaneously drunk in rage and meticulous in skill as he led the Greeks in battle. But most of us probably only know him because of his heel.

Achilles doesn’t die in Homer’s story but Greek legend says that he later suffered a mortal wound to the back of his foot. The “Achilles’ heel,” as it’s called today, has become one of the most popular idioms in Western culture. It refers to a person’s point …

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The antichrist is coming. In fact, many deceivers have already gone out into the world. The moral landscape darkens around us. Christians are increasingly marginalized. How then should we live?

We should love one another.

We should love one another in the face of Satan’s final cataclysmic assault against the church. That’s the call in 2 John, and the main point of John Piper’s most recent message at Bethlehem Baptist.

Stream or download the sermon, “Life Together at the End of the Age.”

God, not us, has designed the blueprint for manhood.

In this three-minute video, Lecrae explains what it looks like.

Related videos:

• Lecrae Raps the Gospel in One Minute (Lecrae)
• The Gospel in Two Minutes (Trip Lee)
• Biblical Masculinity and the Importance of Role Models (Trip Lee)
• How Manhood and Womanhood Are Different (John Piper and Darrin Patrick)
• The Deeper Strength of Masculinity (Darrin Patrick)