I’ve been studying the love of Christ, and my heart has been touched first by Scripture, and second by great thoughts from God’s people. Hope you find these truths encouraging!

Rosaria Butterfield's new book is Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, and she addresses the propaganda modern culture has embraced about sexuality and spirituality, using the word of God to help illuminate each topic. I listened to the audio version of this book, and I can’t tell you how encouraging it was for me to hear Rosaria read it and to hear the inflections of her voice.

In order to understand God’s love in our current culture, it’s necessary to distinguish what love doesn’t mean and to see it in relationship to God’s other attributes. Yes, God is love, but it is not His only attribute, nor is it always His defining attribute. 

Ray Ortlund writes, "The beautiful 'one another' commands of the New Testament are famous. But it is also striking to notice the 'one anothers' that do not appear there."

I read Francis Schaeffer’s The Mark of the Christian shortly after it was published in 1970. I was 16—a new believer studying how to defend gospel truth to friends and family. Yet Schaeffer called Christian love and unity “the final apologetic,” the ultimate defense of our faith. 

Randy Alcorn was interviewed on The Thinking Out Loud Podcast with Kevin and Kyle about his book If God is Good. In this audio clip, Randy talks about God's unlimited goodness and love.  

If we asked people to vote on a divine character quality they most appreciate, God’s love would surely receive far more votes than His holiness. Christians tend to reflect our culture, and because our culture values love and devalues holiness, we do the same.

The church has never had more issues to divide us and make us outraged at each other. There’s a pandemic of accusation and blame, and the result is Christians publicly attacking and berating each other, then remaining unrepentant for doing so. We have an unswerving certainty that we are right about everything, even secondary issues.

We first got to know our dear friend Tami Yeager when she was a part of our EPM staff. She is a dear sister with a big heart for the Lord and for people. May her words encourage all of us, especially those of us who are experiencing suffering, to “love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22, NIV).