Oh, 2015, we hardly knew ye. Good night, sweet year, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
We may all be eager to kick off 2016. But before we lay 2015 to rest for good, let’s take a look at what the year had in store for this blog. Back by popular demand, here are the most popular posts of 2015.
The blog will be officially on vacation for the next week, letting us (and you!) spend some quality time with our families. We’ll see you in the new year!
10. Can Women Teach In The Church? Here’s a question that gets contentious in a hurry. We at the Summit are constantly trying to equip and empower the women of our church to exercise their spiritual gifts, while still reflecting biblical principles of complementarity. This article picks up one aspect of that discussion—women as preachers and teachers.
9. Our Everyday Obedience Is Our Best Witness. We all want our lives to count. We want to be a part of something extraordinary. But our everyday experience often feels mundane and tedious. Here’s the good news: ordinary situations are actually God’s stage for extraordinary power.
8. Fishermen That Don’t Fish. No claim to original content here. This little parable (from Pastor John Drescher) highlights a very obvious, but deeply convicting, truth: Jesus called us to fish for men. If we aren’t catching any—or worse, if we aren’t even fishing—something’s gone wrong.
7. Are You Weak Enough For God To Use You? Our society, like most societies throughout history, prizes strength. Our identity, our security, our value all flow out of our capacity to succeed. But in God’s economy, being “the best” isn’t a virtue; it’s a liability. Because if dependence is the objective, then weakness is an advantage.
6. Why God Doesn’t Remove Our Sinful Cravings Immediately. We’ve all had the experience of coming up against the same sin—again—and wondering, “Will this struggle ever end? Why doesn’t God just remove this?” It’s a frustration common to all believers, and not just with sin, either. When we experience any prolonged suffering or pain or discomfort, we have to ask, Why? Here’s your answer.
5 and 4. Three Muslim Misconceptions about Christians and Three Christian Misconceptions about Muslims. Based on Pastor J.D.’s book Breaking the Islam Code, these two posts offer an important first step in Christian-Muslim relationships: listening well.
3. Five Things God Teaches Us in the Tragic Deaths of Ananias & Sapphira. For reasons known only to the gremlins collating our blog statistics, the most consistent search term that leads people to jdgreear.com (after “J.D. Greear”) is this: “Ananias and Sapphira.” Something about these two tragically greedy figures in Acts 5 continues to strike a chord, almost three years after this original post.
2. Two Ways to Know You Are Saved. It’s a question that pastors get a lot. And one that Pastor J.D. struggled with personally for years: how can I really know that I’m saved? He noticed that the question came up so often that he wrote a book about it. And the popularity of this 2013 post proves that people are still looking for an answer.
And Number 1, by a landslide:
1. Trying to Respond Like Jesus to the Supreme Court Pronouncement on Same-Sex Marriage. In June, the Supreme Court unilaterally decided that same-sex marriage was legal in all 50 states. Some rejoiced; some panicked. This post tries to strike a gospel balance by offering a perspective that will only become more relevant in years to come—a way of responding to cultural trends like Christ.
