“I’d been drinking and I was involved in an accident where a life was lost,” Edgar’s voice is somber but clear. It’s hard to picture Edgar and his wife, Nicole, living prodigal lives, both isolated in the chaos of heavy substance abuse and feeling like the end of their marriage...

Words are the building blocks with which we construct sentences in order to convey ideas, form perceptions, ascribe meaning, and tell stories. We are linguistic creatures because we are creatures made in the divine image. God employed words to create the universe: "By the word of the Lord the heavens...

Have you ever seen something almost every day of your life, hardly noticing it until you see it in a new light and start appreciating it more? This seems to happen to me more now that I have kids—they have a way of bringing new curiosity to the seemingly mundane....

“Tuli pa Nkondo ya Yesu. Pioneer, tigwile nchito. Yesu commander watu, Bible chipolopolo.” Translated from Zambian Chichewa: “We are in a battle for Jesus. Pioneers, let us do the work. Jesus is our commander, the Bible our bullet.” Thirty-six Bible workers sang these words in deep battle cries. The ballad...

“When I first arrived, I thought, ‘This is the worst decision I’ve ever made!’” At 23, my oldest sister, Becky, enlisted in the army and soon found herself in hot, sticky Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for basic training. However, she quickly realized she wasn’t physically ready for bootcamp. She could...

In his excellent book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson writes, “All the wisdom and strength of the ancient world were in Mesopotamia and Egypt…Mesopotamian power and Egyptian wisdom were strength and intelligence divorced from God, put to the wrong ends, and producing all the wrong results.”...

“My addictions are my comfort zones and, if I leave them, well, I'm scared I won't know how to handle myself.” You might not do cocaine or meth, but, on some level, we can all certainly relate to this DM sent to the Light Bearers Instagram. We all have our...

“I. Want. To. Go. Home,” the pastor exclaimed to the auditorium. He wasn’t talking about returning to his bungalow in the suburbs. He was preaching about Jesus taking us to heaven. He used his pauses dramatically, trying to rouse people to give their lives to Jesus and take the gospel...

Get in the Word for yourself. Get in the Word for yourself. Get in the Word for yourself. Get in the Word… That’s really all I want to say in this devotional: Get in the Word for yourself. But I guess I’ll say a little more, since I’ve been asked to...

“I was in a really deep hole and Jared pulled me out.” Those are the words of an 18-year-old young man named Noah, a current ARISE student, who testified to me and his classmates regarding the impact that one of our ARISE graduates had upon him. Before I tell you...

You probably don’t know many four-year-old children with depression, but when my grandma was that age, she was depressed—so depressed, in fact, she stopped eating, laid in bed, and only spoke when necessary. She should have been playing outside, but instead only stared out the window. Being adopted changed her...

Exodus is a book for people in trouble. People who are controlled by external forces, and by internal forces too. People who are enslaved both from without and from within. People who need a liberator. People like you and me. Genesis ends with the death of Joseph, after the settling...