Evident Church

I believe great churches are built by broken people, ministering to other broken people. Brokenness is a willingness to abandon our pride, our pretensions, and our self-righteous posturing. And it is the prerequisite to God’s blessing on our lives and our congregations. Jesus said,  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”  (Matthew 5:3 NIV). When we reach the end of our rope and give up our self-sufficiency, that’s when God moves into our lives with healing and growth. Sin is addicting, and “all have sinned.” That means we’ve all created ungodly and unhealthy methods for handling life, so every church needs to have some form of a recovery ministry. Not one of us is untainted, and because of sin, we’ve all hurt ourselves, we’ve all hurt other people, and others have hurt us. Each of us needs repentance and recovery in order to live our lives the way God intended. At Saddleback, we’ve watched the miracle of  Celebrate Recover...

2 Timothy 2:24, 26 and Colossians 4:5, 6. Why does Paul advise believers to be "gentle" rather than "quarrelsome" in their dealings with outsiders? How does our understanding of the Cosmic Battle affect the way we relate to non-believers? (We deal gently with non-believers because we understand that, within the context of the Cosmic Battle, they have actually been taken captive by the deceptive power of lies. There is a supernatural dimension to the conflict in which we are engaged. Ultimately, we cannot free anyone from this captivity by argumentation, but by helping them come to a belief in God's truth claims - See Luke 4:16-21 and Isaiah 61:1-2.)