“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...

When you think of Saint Patrick’s Day, you likely think of shamrocks or sporting green, but Patrick’s life was full of drama and adventure rather than luck and leprechauns. When Patrick was 16, he was captured by Irish raiders and taken from his homeland (possibly Britain), and sold as a...

Molly Bwalya is a student at the University of Lusaka, Zambia. We all know why people go to universities: to get an education, in order to get a job, in order to get money, in order to provide one’s material needs and wants. Those aren’t bad goals, of course. Yet, there is an infinitely...

Words carry meaning. I say “cat” and immediately an image pops into your head. I say “dog” and the image changes. Some words mean little some mean a lot. And some words mean so much that reality itself would implode without the meaning they carry. Hesed and agape are two...

Back in 1992, IBM launched an ad campaign with a single word: think. It was brilliant because who doesn't want to be regarded as a thinker? But then, in 1997, along came Steve Jobs and Apple who launched what is regarded as one of the most creative strokes of advertising...