People have been making New Year's resolutions for 3,000 years, going all the way back to the ancient times of the Babylonians. The start of a new year that makes us think about new beginnings and a way to mark a brand new starting line. A "resolution" is a determination to do or not do something. It's a plan for your future actions or ways of thin

The tongue is an organ we generally associate with eating, drinking, and speaking. It's this last bit that the Bible speaks of the most—the power of speech. The human tongue has a great capacity for good or evil that far exceeds its routine uses. Proverbs 18:21 refers to the tongue's incredible potential: "Death and life are in the power of the ton

This is one of those questions that comes up all the time among Christians of any age. Especially as teens, we find ourselves trying to express personalities and our originality by getting a tattoo or a piercing or dying our hair bright blue, but our parents say, "No way." What's the reason? And what are we supposed to do?Your parents probably have

It may seem like if we believe God created all things in the universe, then He must have created evil. After all, evil exists, right? Well, yes and no. Evil is not really a "thing" like rain or a butterfly. You cannot capture evil and put it in a jar. Evil doesn't exist all by itself; it is actually the absence of good. Everything God created was g

While "asking Jesus into your heart" is something we hear a lot in the Christian community, especially in children's Sunday school, that phrase is not actually used in the Bible. None of the apostles ever spoke of salvation in terms of "asking Jesus into your heart." To present the message of salvation in such simple terms is, at best, an oversimpl

Ah, relationships. They can get really complicated can't they? First he does this, then she does that, and before you know it, they need major counseling to know what to do next. A lot of the questions we get typically go something like: "I'm really into these two different guys. Which one should I choose to be my boyfriend?" Or, "I'm in a relation

All right. Let's talk about getting physical during dating relationships. This is such a tricky subject, isn't it? Everybody has an opinion, from "don't even make eye contact" to "you can do anything but have sex." If we're trying to live our lives to honor God, how are we supposed to know what to do or where the line is? And what does the Bible sa

Born-again virginity is a term expressing the idea that after having had premarital sex, a person can be restored to virginity by a spiritual renewal, vowing to remain sexually pure until marriage and asking God for forgiveness. There are some women who have taken the idea of born-again virginity so far that they actually have had surgery to restor

Years ago, I served as a chaplain for my Boy Scout troop, and that experience regularly helped me step out of my comfort zone. During a campout one night, there were some older boys in my troop making fun of a younger kid. Let's call him Jack. They weren't doing it to Jack's face, but I suspect he heard the utterly demeaning comments against him. W

Being a Christian in public school can be challenging. Biology class in particular can be a dramatic experience when your faith clashes with what's in your textbook. In every quiz or test, you end up asking yourself: "Do I choose to be obedient to God? Or do I want good grades and a pleasant relationship with my teacher instead"?As a teenager, I mu

Easter is about celebrating Jesus' resurrection, so it would stand to reason that the date of Jesus' resurrection should be the date of Easter, right? If it was, how would we figure THAT date? The gospels (Matthew, Mark Luke, John) in the Bible all make it clear that Jesus' crucifixion happened at the same time as the Jewish Passover (Matthew 26:17

The Bible doesn't tell us the exact day of the week when Jesus was crucified, but the two most widely accepted views are that it was either Wednesday or Friday. Some people find a compromise by saying He was crucified on a Thursday. Speaking of Himself, Jesus said, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the So

Nudists are people who hold to the philosophy that an unclothed existence can lead to many health benefits. Many nudists view nakedness as “more natural” and could also be labeled as “naturists”—those who believe in returning to nature. For the nudist, any activity of daily life can be done naked, whether it’s gardening, taking a hike, or connectin

Despite all the ways women are celebrated today as pioneers or innovators, they are often still perceived as nothing more than objects of desire. It's not just Hollywood and advertising that's to blame, but our culture that elevates or lowers women based on their attractiveness. Young men, you must consider how you are viewing women, both in a gene

I threw away a book yesterday. It didn’t say anything important about science. It didn’t tell me exactly what to eat for lunch. Some of what it said, I didn’t want to do. The book had zero facts about history, or archaeology, or politics, or the life cycle of starfish. The author never mentioned Abraham Lincoln, which I assume means they don’t even

Ideally, a Christian relationship or marriage will start with both people as virgins, because in God's eyes, marriage is the only place for sex. But this world is far from ideal, isn't it? You may have been raised in a godly home, got saved at a young age, and you were able to maintain your physical purity as a virgin. But then you meet and fall in

Have you ever thought that if you could have a face-to-face conversation with Jesus, you could gain a much better understanding of who He is and what He wants? We might assume that one good conversation would clear up a lot of our questions. But then we look at His often-fumbling disciples and realize that three years of walking beside Jesus, doing

As believers of Christ, we should all be working toward glorifying the Lord. So will a "white lie" count for or against the goodness that will glorify Him? If the lie doesn't hurt anyone, does it even count? What if it would hurt a person to tell them the truth?Even though the world excuses some lies because they're trivial (like saying traffic mad

Have you ever heard someone say they saw Jesus? Maybe in a dream or a "vision" or while they were on a mountaintop, praying for God to give them a sign? Did they actually see Jesus? Are they lying? Or are they straight up deluded? How should we respond to those who claim to have seen Jesus? Is Jesus on earth today? The Bible is clear that Jesus is

This is one of those topics that Christians love to argue about. Are we "once saved always saved"? Or is it possible to do something so bad that our salvation gets revoked? And if that happens, can we earn it back later by being good enough? So many things to debate, but what does the Bible say about how permanent salvation is? (NOTE: If you aren't