One mysterious part of being a Christian is discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Most often, he speaks to us directly through his word in our Bibles. When someone reads the Bible, it is the “Sword of the Spirit” that cuts into our lives. Every person who follows Jesus believes this to some degree.

How else does the Holy Spirit speak to us? I believe he can speak through preachers and teachers who explain what the Bible says. He can also use books, podcasts, and even lowly blogs like this one.

How else can the Holy Spirit work? He can use circumstances and events to show us which doors are open and which are closed. He can nudge our conscience in prayer. Possibly even speak to us with a still, small voice.

I also believe the Holy Spirit can speak to us through other believers. This one is often the most complicated for people to believe.

While speaking with another pastor about getting people to step up as volunteers, he suggested, “I just ask the Holy Spirit to lay it on their heart to get involved.” It sounds noble and deeply spiritual. My response was much more basic: “I simply tell them that they need to be involved to be a part of our membership.”

You see, I have read the Bible, prayed, watched people grow in their faith, and seen the impact of serving in a Church community, and I am sure God desires to see them serve. So, I get to play the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives. I can speak and tell them what they need to do with their faith.

Amazingly enough, the Holy Spirit uses people to share his message and direction. In fact, in the Bible, he uses people more than anything else to further his work. As Christians, we rarely need to withdraw, go into nature, and sit quietly until we hear God speak. Instead, we need to read our Bibles, pray, and talk to mature believers. His voice is the clearest in community, but it is the easiest place to ignore it. Perhaps God is using the person challenging you to be the Holy Spirit’s voice in your life. Are you even listening?

Heroes are people who do that most counterintuitive thing: they run toward trouble.

When the planes hit the towers, they ran inside trying to help people. When the shots rang out, they moved toward the shooters to reduce the number of victims. When disaster hits a community, they drive into the chaos looking for people to help.

Recently, I showed my staff a clip of a sermon by a youth pastor. He used an illustration during his message of one of the girls who attended his youth group. She came to visit, then at the end of the night she grabbed him to say she would never return. He inquired about the reason for her disappointment. She explained how no one greeted her when she arrived. She was not made to feel welcome, and that was very important to her. 

This wise pastor responded, “Come back and next week you can be in charge of our greeters.” His words were received with a blank stare. He continued, “You know what it is like to be left out and now you can make sure no one else feels this way.”

In my experience, when someone encounters a problem in the Church or in its ministry, the natural tendency is to quit. The result is that the problem gets worse, and there are now fewer people to handle it.

What the Church needs is more people who see problems and then run toward them to help. There is always room for someone willing to act heroically.   

When my dad passed away, we started the process of going through all his stuff. One of the items he had on the shelf was a few Bibles with notes filling the blank front and back pages. There were underlines and words scribbled in margins. Some passages were highlighted with arrows and explanatory words. I took one, and it sits here in my office.

Like him, many other Christians take their Bibles and mark them up with notes. They highlight and underline passages as they read when they feel a connection to them.

Why do we do this? I know these little additions help us to understand what we are reading. The lines and marks help certain verses to jump out to us when we are flipping through its pages.

But I would suggest to you that they are also evidence. They are a sign that you are reading your Bible. They are little memories of God speaking to you through his word. Each note is a reminder of someone teaching you something new about faith. Every little mark is proof that God’s word is living and active in your life.

I keep father’s Bible because it shows me that he was a man who walked with Jesus. I wonder what your Bible will reveal about you?

One of the easiest mistakes in the Christian life is believing that because we have done something before, we can do it again by our own power. We think that we can breeze through life without God.

We have experience. We have knowledge. We have a plan. We know the routine. And then we move forward in our own strength.

Prayerful dependence is the continual recognition that we need God today just as much as we needed Him yesterday. It is admitting that our wisdom is limited, our strength is insufficient, and our plans are imperfect.

Prayer is not something we do when we run out of options. Prayer is how believers acknowledge that God is the source of every good thing in their life and work. It is a declaration that we trust him more than we trust ourselves.

The temptation is to depend on our abilities while asking God to bless them. As believers, we are called to seek His direction, rely on His strength, and trust His timing. We lean not on our own power, talent, or experience.

Today, before you rush into your responsibilities, spend a few moments in prayer. Dependence on God is not weakness. It is the pathway to strength.

Every community of believers creates a culture when they are together. Some Churches are small, and you feel like you are in someone’s home and with family. Others are large, with an emphasis on high-quality production. In some Churches, the staff does all the pastoral work, and the people do little as volunteers. Others are driven primarily by volunteers and have very few staff.

There is no right or wrong way to do Church, and each community is free to create its own culture.

At the Church I lead, I am working continually to build a community that seeks to reach unbelievers with the message of Jesus. The goal is to create a safe place for people with little to no religious background to come. I strive to welcome people who have not been in Church for a decade or more. I desire to see people come to know Jesus for the first time or for the first time in a long time.

Building that kind of culture requires many small, intentional decisions. It means greeters who are genuinely warm and a welcome team that goes out of its way to make people feel seen. It means background checks on workers, so every family feels safe. It means explaining things from the stage that regular churchgoers take for granted, because there’s always someone in the room hearing it for the first time. It means sermons that don’t assume Biblical fluency. And it means covering all of it in prayer, trusting the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do.

At the core, our culture is driven by one desire: to see lost people become found. Prodigals coming home. Sinners saved. People who feel far from God experiencing grace up close.

I haven’t arrived. But that’s what I’m building toward. A place where everyone is welcome, and Jesus is exalted. If that sounds like your kind of Church, we’d love to have you.

Encouragement means giving someone a boost of courage when they’re feeling weak or unsupported. It lifts another person and gives them the confidence they need to press forward and finish what they started.

Discouragement, on the other hand, strips people of that desire. It drains their motivation and leaves them feeling like there’s no point in going on.

So when someone is discouraged, what they need most is someone who will come alongside them and remind them to keep going.

That can look like a phone call, a letter, an email, a text, a visit, a kind word, or even a simple prayer. You have the ability to help someone make it through their day, and maybe even through one of the hardest seasons of their life. When you go out of your way to encourage someone, you may never fully see the impact, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

You carry more power in this world than you realize. Use it for good. “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Our Church sings a song entitled “All the People Say Amen.”

While singing this song during worship recently, I began to wonder how many people truly understood what they were vocalizing.

The word amen originated in ancient Hebrew as a phrase meaning “so be it,” “truly,” or “verily.” At its heart, it carries the idea of saying, “I believe this is true,” or “I trust what has been spoken.” Whenever Christians say “amen,” they offer a note of affirmation and agreement.

That means amen is much more than a religious punctuation mark. It is not merely the signal that a prayer is over or that a sermon point was appreciated. It is a declaration of faith.

When we say amen to a prayer, we are expressing our confidence that God hears and answers according to His will. When we say “amen” to a Scripture reading, we affirm that God’s Word is true. When we say “amen” to a sermon, we acknowledge that God’s truth should shape our lives.

Perhaps the next time we say “amen,” we should pause and consider what we are affirming. Are we simply repeating a familiar word, or are we genuinely agreeing with God? Are we willing to live out the truth we are saying amen to?

May our amens be more than words spoken with our lips. May they be declarations that rise from believing hearts and are demonstrated through obedient lives. After all, every time we say amen, we are essentially saying, “Lord, I believe You, I trust You, and I will follow Your truth.”

Whenever someone you know is going through a difficult time, I firmly believe that one of the most important things we can do for them is pray. We can take the matter before God and ask for him to intercede.

But I want to emphasize that this is not where our compassion should end. The follow-up step is to help actively.

James writes this in his letter to the Church, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:15–17).

There is a tendency among people of faith to wish people well, even to ask God to work, and then sit back and do nothing. It’s even possible that we might be asking God to do something, so that we don’t have to get involved. To this, James highlights that faith is tied to action. The two are so locked together that claiming faith without acting is the mark of a dead faith.

As Christians, when we hear of a need, we should most certainly pray, but we must follow that up by actively seeking to fix the problem. If we only do the first thing, our faith is of little value to the person struggling.

The goal is for us to pray and do. Perhaps you are the answer to someone else’s prayer.

The preacher said, “I was never taught that as a child.”

My immediate thought was, Are you sure? It is entirely possible that you were taught it, but you were not listening.

Over the years, I have heard people say things like, “My preacher never teaches on that topic.” The interesting part is that I know the subject was addressed recently because I was there when it was preached.

There are many possible reasons for this. Maybe they missed that Sunday. Maybe they were distracted. Maybe they heard the words but were not truly listening. Whatever the reason, they did not receive the teaching and quickly concluded that it was never taught.

Listening is harder than we often admit. We can sit through a sermon, Bible study, or lesson and still miss what is being said. Being present is not the same as paying attention.

One of my struggles as a preacher is realizing that I can carefully prepare a message, clearly communicate it, and still have people miss it entirely. At the end of the day, all I can do is faithfully teach God’s Word. Whether people truly hear it, receive it, and apply it is up to them.

Jesus often ended His teaching with the words, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” The challenge is not simply being present when truth is taught. The challenge is truly listening.

I was riding with a charter boat captain, and we had to make a one-hour run from the dock to the fishing grounds. As we went, we kept passing clusters of boats in the river. He raised his hand and said, “They are fishing memories.”

What in the world does that mean? He explained that, normally, at this time of year, given the water temperature, the fish would be in those locations, but they are not there. So people go out and fish those spots because they were successful years before, even though they are not catching anything now.

As a pastor, I could not help but think of the Church and the followers of Jesus who are called to be “Fishers of Men.” One struggle in the Church is that we keep running programs that were successful years ago, but the fish no longer respond. Christians can hold onto methods that are no longer productive because they worked years ago. In the end, we are fishing memories.

The challenge for a Church that wants to reach non-Christians with the gospel is to go where the fish are and use effective tactics. When what worked in the past stops working, it is time to move on and try something new. This is true whether we go out to catch dinner or to make an eternal difference.