What comes to mind when you hear the phrase spiritual formation?

Is it prayer and fasting, spiritual encounters, carefully designed programs meant to accelerate growth?

Today, many popular approaches to spiritual formation simply drift away from Scripture.

In A Heart of Flame for God, Matthew C. Bingham draws from the Puritan tradition to show how

believers can cultivate spiritual disciplines rooted in grace alone. This book explores prayer, meditation,

and self-examination within a reformed framework that keeps Christ at the center of the Christian life.

Support our work with the gift of any amount, and we'll send you a copy.

Visit solarmedia.org slash offers to get yours today.

When should a follower of Jesus disobey authority structures like the government?

Increasingly, this has become a relevant question for followers of Jesus in the

United States. From questions about COVID lockdowns and whether the churches should have closed

their doors to DEI policies that pressured believers, followers of Jesus, to affirm or

encourage sexual orientations or identities that scripture calls sinful. Many have had to wrestle with this very

question, and it's a question which men and women in the Bible also had to wrestle through.

In this video, I'm looking at some of the Bible's teaching related to submitting to governing

authorities.

Right before he went to the cross, Jesus Christ had an interesting exchange with the spineless governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

Having grown tired of Jesus' silence, Pilate told him,

Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

In response to that, Jesus said to him you and authority to crucify you. In response to that,

Jesus said to him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Now, that is a profound statement. Here, Jesus is speaking to a pagan ruler and he tells him

point blank, your authority is derivative. The ultimate authority is God.

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