Nate Crandall

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17) When the news media tries to scoop its competition it basically wants a story that nobody else has. If they get the scoop they can underscore their namesake with the claim that what they are publishing is new. Nobody wants to read or see olds. Everyone wants to know the news. So when we talk about the Good News of Christ it might seem like we should call it the Good Olds. After all it has been around for a couple thousand years and nothing has been added to it. For those of us who are familiar with the gospel (good news) of Christ, it is in fact old news. However, for perhaps the majority of people alive today it still would be considered news. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, p

Peter and John went to pray. They met a lame man on the way. Then God changed everything. Peter and John were expecting to pray, not heal a lame man. The lame man was expecting some loose change, not to walk for the first time in his life. The people in the temple who saw this miracle were expecting to do their normal religious activity, not to be amazed by the supernatural work of God and to hear the message of Christ which would turn their world upside down. One thing I have learned over and over about God is that He does the unexpected. One thing I have learned about we humans is that we rarely do anything out of the norm. I think that Solomon was talking about this when he wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Not only do we rarely do anything out of the norm, we also tend to have the same old expectations. Life has taught us this lesson well. Perhaps we fall into this trap because we haven't learned the lessons that Jesus taught a