As the New Year unfolds, fear and uncertainty can cloud your vision. This prayer encourages you to trust God’s unseen hand and take each step with faith, not fear.

Be empowered by the Lord’s promise to provide exactly what’s needed in His perfect time.

Monday is the time when we usually get back to work, school, or our everyday household tasks. It can be a tough day, but it's also an easy reset. This study guide helps you take just a few minutes per day to reorient your week and focus on building up spiritual habits that will last a lifetime! Download this guide today and start building healthy spiritual practices into your week. Photo credit: Unsplash/Ingrid HallPhoto credit: ©SWN/CanvaPro

What if this year we chose to shift our focus off us and our circumstances and placed our sights on the wonders of our incredible God?

Thirty-three books by one author, read in the order of publication. That was the reading goal I set for myself in 2025. Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the writings of Lesslie Newbigin. Many of his books I’d read before, but I wanted to discover how his ideas developed over time. In mid-2025, I planned to spend a month at the Newbigin archives at the University of Birmingham, England. I believed a yearlong immersion in the thought world of the famous missiologist would be an enriching experience. I was right. Faithful and Flawed Many people I mention Newbigin’s name to have never heard of him. That’s probably because I’m a conservative evangelical ministering in evangelical spaces, and Newbigin operated in a different theological lane. Newbigin and his wife, Helen, were dispatched to India by the Church of Scotland in 1936, where they served as missionaries for over three decades. Along the way, Newbigin was instrumental in helping to launch the Church of South India, which resulted from a merger (he called it a reunion) of three Protestant denominations. He went on to serve administratively in both the International Missionary Council and the World Council of Churches (WCC). After retiring, he returned to England and became a prolific author and speaker devoted to a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture. During his retirement years, he pastored a small, multicultural congregation in a community that was experiencing “a famine of hope.” Newbigin was a prolific author and speaker devoted to a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture. Why should evangelicals read Newbigin, given his involvement with the WCC and his position within mainline Protestantism? It’s a fair question, and one that deserves a brief answer before we explore my lessons from his writings. Newbigin was trained in Cambridge at a theologically liberal school, and that experience influenced his ministry in ways that diverged from orthodoxy. For example, although Newbigin had a high view of Scripture’s authority, he denied inerrancy. He also became increasingly open to soteriological inclusivism over his life. While he did reject universalism and believed that the cross of Christ was the only means of salvation, he held out hope that God would save more people based on Christ’s death than we surmise. I believe in inerrancy, and I reject soteriological inclusivism. However, I’ve learned to appreciate much of Newbigin’s ministry. He was a lifelong member of a tradition that can best be described as theological liberalism. Yet his convictions often skewed toward evangelicalism. In the archives last summer, I was privileged to see an exegetical paper he wrote on the atonement in the Old Testament. In his autobiography, Newbigin describes this as the flowering of his theological ideas about the atonement, which first developed as he studied the Greek text of Romans: “At the end of the exercise I was much more of an evangelical than a liberal.” Learn from Newbigin What insights from the life of this missionary-statesman can we apply to our lives? I’ve learned at least three lessons by reading Newbigin this year. 1. Live with courage. When I read A South India Diary, I was gripped by the stories of Newbigin’s sometimes dangerous ministry. He described a hazardous mountain ascent on a motorcycle and negotiating amid violent conflict. He was willing to risk his life for the gospel. But his courage wasn’t merely physical. In the last years of his life, he challenged the evil of abortion at a WCC gathering. He wrote a letter defending a biblical sexual ethic to the editor of a British newspaper. He confronted the wickedness of apartheid. Newbigin was a man courageous enough to follow his Savior even when his peers were going the other way. 2. Center life and ministry on the cross. Newbigin was converted when he had a vision of the cross, and he never lost his focus on that climactic event. From his books geared toward lay readers (Sin and Salvation) to his works on church unification (The Reunion of the Church) to his works on missiology (The Open Secret), Newbigin kept the cross at the center. Newbigin declared, “By [Christ’s] incarnation, His ministry, His death and resurrection, He has finally broken the powers that oppress us and has created a space and a time in which we who are unholy can nevertheless live in fellowship with God who is holy.” 3. Work toward the conversion of Western culture. Although a “vibe shift” might be underway, evangelicals are still swimming upstream in Western culture. Yet Newbigin’s later writings are all devoted to a fresh missionary encounter between the gospel and the West. And he believed it was possible for the West to be reconverted. Without falling prey to the Constantinian temptation of conflating church and state, Newbigin fostered cruciform engagement with the wider culture. Tim Keller formally answered Newbigin’s challenge in his Princeton lecture and in his book How to Reach the West Again. People like Keller and Newbigin believed revival was possible but that it would only come through a razor-sharp focus on the gospel. This is why the local church is crucial. Newbigin asked, “How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” Newbigin believed revival was possible but that it would only come through a razor-sharp focus on the gospel. Newbigin’s writings can still motivate and inspire us because the throughline of all his works was the gospel. He was a humble and confident witness who consistently pointed to Jesus over the course of a ministry that spanned six decades. I’m glad I spent the last year reading most of his works. If you’re interested in reading Newbigin but don’t know where to start, I recommend Journey into Joy. There, you’ll discover the joy that Newbigin found when Jesus found him at the cross.

I’ve experienced tough situations in my adult life, including a divorce, single parenting two young boys, and telling them at ages 8 and 14 that their dad had been killed in a car accident. Despite those challenges, I’ve told many people that caring for an aging loved one is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. My caregiving responsibilities began when I worked full-time and my mother-in-law was in her mid-80s. By the time my mother-in-law was in her last year, my own mom began to have aging struggles brought on by a fall that resulted in a broken clavicle. It’s embarrassing to admit, but in the first few years, I simply did what needed to be done. I typically didn’t have the glory of God or his provision in view to help me serve with a gracious attitude. Even if I did consider “the first commandment with a promise” (Eph. 6:2), it was mainly with a check-the-box attitude. According to Senior Living’s Family Caregiver Annual Report, one in five Americans is a caregiver to an elderly family member, friend, or neighbor. That seems like such a high number. But it’s comforting to know we’re not alone. Those of us supporting an elderly loved one know it isn’t easy, whether the loved one is in our home, his or her own home, a long-term care facility, or a senior-living community. Caring for an aging loved one is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Aging’s results are innumerable; physical injuries, diseases, cognitive decline, and mental health problems affect each person differently. As they compound, the challenges increase for the loved one and for caregivers striving to bring comfort, safety, and healing. Abundant resources are available on caregiving, but few teach us how to do it for God’s glory. Despite my many years of giving care perfunctorily, the Lord was gracious to guide me—sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently—to actions and mindsets that made the journey easier. 1. Pray for yourself. We tend to pray for others but not ourselves. I prayed a surface-level prayer in the past, which may have sounded more like “Lord, please help Mom want to do things my way.” But I eventually learned to pray more specific and biblical petitions: To glorify God in all I do (Col. 3:17) For empathy toward my loved one (Rom. 15) To be kind, even when I have to be firm (Gal. 5:22) To see my loved one as God’s image-bearer (Gen. 1:26) To see God at work (Phil. 2:13) For wisdom to find specific ways to best minister to needs (James 1:5) For unity in the family around the best options (2 Cor. 13:11) For genuine affection and delight in honoring my loved one (Rom. 12:10) 2. Pray for your loved one. Scripture is the best basis for prayer, and my favorite resource for praying for someone struggling is Nancy Guthrie’s I’m Praying for You: 40 Days of Praying for Someone Who Is Suffering. Likely, your loved one has or will have a great desire to feel useful. Guthrie covers this need in her prayer based on John 15:1–2: “Give ____ eyes to see that you are purposeful in the pruning and that you intend for his life to produce beautiful fruit that will please him and please you.” Another common desire of suffering people is to understand what God is doing in this challenging season. Based on John 9:3, Guthrie’s prayer begins, Lord, we don’t presume to know exactly what your purpose is in allowing this suffering into ____ ’s life. But we believe that because he belongs to you, his suffering is not random or meaningless. It’s purposeful. And so we ask you to accomplish your purposes. We ask that your power at work in ____’s life would be seen in his life. If your loved one is an unbeliever, you can pray that your ministry to her will create opportunities to share Christ’s love verbally and through service, and that her heart would be softened rather than hardened by her disability. 3. Recognize that this situation is harder on the loved one than it is on you. People who have been self-sufficient their whole adult lives can be in denial that they need help. Your loved one may resent offers of help, even those that are necessary and loving. Recognize his frustration and try to find a way for the help you’re suggesting to be his idea. 4. Leave as much dignity as long as safely possible. My mom used to be offended by people drawing attention to something hanging from her mouth while she ate, even though caregivers thought she’d want to know. We decided to drop it because it wasn’t a safety issue. On the other hand, once her fall risk was almost 100 percent, we had to insist on help in the bathroom at all times. 5. Look for and focus on the blessings. Mom was blessed to have the resources to be in a lovely senior-living community. She had six regular ladies who took care of her in 12-hour shifts. This allowed me to focus on the more administrative side of caregiving, such as supply ordering, resource management, and doctor (and ER) visits. There are many other blessings to notice as well. If you can focus on some positives, they may  reciprocate. Pray her heart would be softened rather than hardened by her disability. As a caregiver, focusing on honoring the Lord first shifted my perspective. Changing my attitude to a more godly one also changed my mom’s outlook; she became more appreciative. Scripture teaches us repeatedly that God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in faithful love. As a Christ-follower, I should want to emulate his character. Through his power that works within me (Eph. 3:20), I can do that.

Mum on Minnesota: Mediaite Reports CNN and MS NOW Are Ignoring the Exploding Somali Fraud Story

Elon Musk is at it again, and this time, he’s serving up meme justice for Minnesota 'daycares'. After news broke about widespread fraud in the state’s childcare programs, Musk posted a meme featuring…