Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us.” Return must be the church’s watchword, now as it was back then. Return to Christ Jesus. Return to the apostolic traditions. Return to the Scriptures.

As John, one of the apostles, wrote toward the end of the apostolic age, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24).

Today, if we go back to the teaching of the apostles and use that as our template, the congregations that you and I worship with will resemble congregations in the New Testament in the very same ways that those congregations resembled one another.

God can’t be other than what He is. He couldn’t reconcile Himself to us in simply any way that “felt good” to Him; it would have to be in a way consistent with His divine attributes, which are fixed and very definite: hence, “the Way” (Acts 9:1,2).

God’s people “bear” His name. In a sense, God has put His reputation in the hands of those who are “a people for his name.” Knowing that the world is watching, we live so as to reflect favorably on God’s character and His power (Matthew 5:13–16).

“I will be their God” had reference in the old covenant to Israel, but in the new it would encompass people from every nation. And amazingly, even this had been anticipated in the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah’s reign, like Daniel 7:13,14.

Christ did not die for the mere betterment of our feelings, and seeking God through Him is not mostly about pain relief. It is about character transformation. And even more than character transformation, it is about the glorification of God.

God did not show Himself to be dependable just so that we might sleep better at night. The demonstration of God’s perfect power and love leads us to trust Him, but we are led to trust Him so that we might once again obey Him!

Without any doubt, the single greatest thing that can stabilize our attitude toward God is meditation on the constancy with which He loves us. His faithfulness to us does not wax and wane. He continues to love us faithfully even on our worst days.

The love to which we should aspire is one that loves God for His own sake, worships Him without compensation, and serves Him without self-interest. These things aren’t easy in a world where most of us listen to station WIFM (What’s In It For Me?).

It is often true that things appear to get worse before they get better. Frankly, it is hard to keep from getting impatient. But here is where faith comes in. The principal part of faith is its ability to bear a heavy burden and still keep going.

If we worship something other than God as He is, we are worshiping an idol, a creature that we have made. And nothing is more disastrous spiritually than to worship a creature (whether one of God’s or one of our own) rather than the Creator Himself.

One of the worst aspects of hell will be the helplessness of the whole situation. Not having wanted to see the truth, we never did see it . . . until it was too late. And at that point, nothing can be done but to agonize over the truth. Forever.

We were created to live within God’ will, but we have rebelled against our King and tried to set up our own kingdom. In this “kingdom of self,” the rule is “Not Thy will but mine be done.” Free to choose, we have often chosen our own will over God’s.

If we persist in our rebellion against God, despite His pleas for us to do otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for eternal despair. In hell, there will be no more chance of “reaching forward” — no chance of ever being anything but lost.

Hell will be the final abandonment of those who have rejected God: God will turn away, for eternity, from those who have turned away from Him. And the anguish of hell will be knowing it could have been otherwise, if we had not refused God’s love.

When we long for something and that longing ends up being disappointed, the worst thing we can do is close up our hearts. That type of play-it-safe conservatism is deadly to the human spirit, and no one is pleased with it but our spiritual enemy.

Faith does not ignore questions or minimize their importance, but it does exercise patience. Faith is willing to wait and see what happens. History is, after all, a story, and in a story, the conflicts don’t usually get resolved until the end.