Kyiv and Washington agreed yesterday on the terms of a draft minerals deal that Ukrainian officials hope will improve relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for long-term security commitments by the US. There was a day when such incentives were ideological rather than economic as the West opposed the Soviet Union’s drive to impose Communism on the world. Understanding this shift from ideology to pragmatism is vital to understanding the world today—and finding peace with God, ot...
Feb 26, 2025•8 min
From leadership changes to economic shifts, we’ve seen versions of today’s headlines before. But why do they resonate so deeply? Humans all have an innate desire for meaning and spend their lives searching for significance. True purpose isn’t just about what we know, but who we know. In today’s article, Dr. Jim Denison challenges us to move beyond knowledge about God to a transformative relationship with Him—one that changes how we live, love, and engage with the world. About Denison Forum and T...
Feb 25, 2025•7 min
Kfir Bibas was ten months old and his brother Ariel was four when Hamas kidnapped them along with their parents on October 7. Their tiny bodies were returned in black boxes last Thursday during Hamas and Israel’s hostage exchange. Helen Keller observed, “Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.” However, ideas can empower tyranny. When we proclaim God’s kingdom in words and bring it into being through actions, Jesus changes the hearts and lives of all who respond to him by faith. About Denison ...
Feb 24, 2025•8 min
The peace talks between America and Russia continue to dominate headlines , with leaders in Europe and Ukraine increasingly wary of how they’ve been excluded from those discussions. While President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin have all acknowledged that Ukraine will be part of the negotiations when they begin in earnest, that is not how much of the Western world has seen this week’s events. About Denison Forum and The Daily Article Today's Dail...
Feb 21, 2025•7 min
Wicked star Cynthia Erivo will play Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. The United Church of Christ Cathedral of Hope in Dallas hosted a service last Sunday dedicated to celebrating drag performers and transgender individuals. One reason such stories are discouraging is that we’re not sure what, if anything, we can do in response. And we instinctually want answers to our questions and solutions for our problems. Our hope rests, of course, in Jesus. About Denison Fo...
Feb 20, 2025•7 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! A Delta flight made a hard landing Monday afternoon in Toronto, lost a wing, burst into flames, and flipped onto its roof. Delta said twenty-one injured people were taken to local hospitals; nineteen were released by the next morning. Three had critical but non-life-threatening injuries, one of whom was a child. However, there were no fatalities. We live in a world filled with alarming headlines and endless updates, often leaving us overwhel...
Feb 19, 2025•7 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! High-level delegations from the US and Russia have begun meeting in what the Wall Street Journal calls the “highest-profile Russia talks since [the] Ukraine invasion.” Today’s discussions in Saudi Arabia could lead to an eventual summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Israel eliminated Muhammad Shaheen yesterday, the head of Hamas’s Operations Department in Lebanon. According to Israeli security forces, Shaheen ...
Feb 18, 2025•7 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! Article Description Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow made headlines over the weekend by posting an Instagram video in which she waves goodbye to her Tesla as it is driven away. She explained: “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla.” The preponderance of celebrities seeking political influence across the partisan spectrum stands in sharp contrast with the hero our nation celebrates today ...
Feb 17, 2025•8 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! San Francisco’s tech world has long resisted faith, but a shift is underway. Trae and Michelle Stephens launched the ACTS 17 Collective to engage the industry’s elite, believing the powerful need Jesus too. Through networking events featuring Christian speakers, they offer value to those shaping culture while planting seeds of the gospel. The group’s success across Silicon Valley and beyond raises a question for all believers: When you think...
Feb 14, 2025•6 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! Article Description Trump spoke with Putin about ending the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said he had also spoken with Mr. Trump about a “lasting, reliable peace.” Meanwhile, NASA warned an asteroid could hit Earth in 2032—though the risk is just 2.1 percent. These threats remind us of life’s fragility and reveal our deeper fear surrounding death—not the pain of dying, but the prospect of annihilation. But Chri...
Feb 13, 2025•7 min
Hamas stated Monday that it would postpone the release of three hostages scheduled to be freed this weekend to protest delays in deliveries of humanitarian goods. Yesterday, I was privileged to meet one of my longtime Israeli friends for lunch. I asked him for his thoughts on the hostage crisis and, as usual, his perspective was both brilliant and enlightening. What’s more, I found his thoughts relevant to an even larger context that touches us all. To make this point, let’s put my friend’s resp...
Feb 12, 2025•7 min
President Trump signed an executive order establishing a White House Faith Office “to assist faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship in their efforts to strengthen American families, promote work and self-sufficiency, and protect religious liberty.” A White House initiative to encourage faith-based efforts as they seek to strengthen our nation is both a good idea and a bad idea. The implications of both extend far beyond Washington and touch every soul in America tod...
Feb 11, 2025•8 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! Article Description: After shielding his toddler sister in a deadly plane crash, ten-year-old Trey Howard awoke from brain surgery asking if he had saved her. Inspired by his bravery, Eagles star A.J. Brown dedicated his Super Bowl performance to Trey, then went on to win the Lombardi trophy in last night’s game. Trey’s selflessness mirrors the higher calling of faith—living not for power or comfort but to serve others through God’s strength...
Feb 10, 2025•7 min
Request your choice of Lenten devotional guides today! USAID funds both vital aid and questionable projects, but its lack of oversight has drawn criticism. President Trump’s push to rein it in raises questions of accountability. Waste and corruption exist alongside good work, but does the good excuse the flaws? Just as governance demands integrity, so too does faith call for growth in all areas of our lives. Today we discuss the singular fruit of the spirit and how the Holy Spirit uses it to tra...
Feb 07, 2025•9 min
This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will play the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. Why does the NFL use Roman numerals when no other league does? Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt suggested in 1970 that the big game employ Roman numerals instead, lending the game a kind of gravitas as a major event. Mr. Hunt is also credited with coining the name “Super Bowl.” But in my mind, the remarkable success of the NFL, the Super Bowl, and the Chiefs are not his most significant achievement. It was my privi...
Feb 06, 2025•7 min
Article Description: President Trump shocked the world Tuesday evening when he declared , “The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too.” He added, “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding the area into a mecca for tourism and jobs, vowing to turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” He also said the two million Palestinians in Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation of the a...
Feb 05, 2025•10 min
At last Sunday’s Grammy Awards, Kanye West’s wife, Bianca Censori, walked the red carpet in an entirely see-through dress. Hollywood did not censure it and Censori did not receive any fines for public nudity, but primarily non-Christian Japan will likely cancel their $20M contract for upcoming Kanye West shows. Today, we look at three reasons Satan uses sexual temptation against humanity and four steps we can take today to combat the allure of sexual immorality. About Denison Forum and The Daily...
Feb 05, 2025•8 min
President Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon. According to Israeli officials, the future of the Gaza hostage release and ceasefire deal is hanging on the outcome of their talks. Israel says it has killed approximately twenty thousand Hamas fighters so far. However, the US estimates that the terror group has recruited up to fifteen thousand new members since the conflict began. Here's the problem: As one of my longtime Israeli friends told me, “Hamas is...
Feb 04, 2025•8 min
Luka Dončić was traded, Taylor Swift left the Grammys without a win, and the stock market is tumbling—but let’s talk about the Kansas City Chiefs. Questionable calls in their playoff run have sparked debate, but the idea of a league-wide conspiracy doesn’t hold up. Meanwhile, Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter. The deeper story behind Groundhog Day leads us to a discussion of Candlemas and a reminder that Jesus is the true light. The question is, will you walk in it today? About...
Feb 03, 2025•9 min
As former Democrats turned Trump supporters, Kennedy and Gabbard were always going to have the greatest difficulty among the president’s nominees in finding acceptance from Senate Republicans. However, Tulsi Gabbard’s hearing for her nomination to be Director of National Intelligence was particularly interesting in that what many thought would be the most contentious issue—her past stance on FISA Section 702—proved to be something of an afterthought. Her choices in her hearing speak to a princip...
Jan 31, 2025•7 min
An American Airlines jet carrying sixty passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter that apparently flew into its path as it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport last night. Officials do not believe there were any survivors of the deadliest US air crash in nearly twenty-four years. The plane was flying from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington, DC. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said the tragedy “can only be described as nothing short of a nightmare.” President Trump stated ...
Jan 30, 2025•9 min
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is President Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services. Our postmodern culture is convinced that there is no such thing as objective reality, only your reality and mine. In this view, perception is reality. Satan uses this worldview to convince us that God and his love isn’t real, which then closes us off to God’s transforming love. Today, we talk about how to orient our lives around objective truth and pursue a reality filled with God’s goodness and grace....
Jan 30, 2025•7 min
Chinese AI model DeepSeek was released last week. It appeared to perform on par with counterparts from OpenAI, the US firm at the heart of the AI boom, but with far less computing power or money invested. As the Wall Street Journal reported, this “turned tech and Wall Street upside down,” causing Nvidia’s stock to plunge more than $590 billion and tech stocks across the board to plummet. In today’s article, we explore humanity’s relationship with the illusion of control and why God being on the ...
Jan 29, 2025•8 min
Teresa Regula arrived at Auschwitz as a sixteen-year-old. Speaking ahead of yesterday’s eightieth anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation by Soviet troops, she said: “When I returned (from the camp), I thought, ‘I’m never going to have children—ever.’ If they had to go through even a fraction of what I went through, I didn’t want that.” Though she later married, she has remained childless all her life. I would imagine that many of Hitler’s Jewish victims knew Psalm 22, David’s famous prayer of lam...
Jan 28, 2025•7 min
Hamas released four female Israeli soldiers on Saturday under the Gaza ceasefire deal. As part of the agreement, Israel freed two hundred Palestinian prisoners. The soldiers were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross before meeting Israeli forces who transported them into Israel. According to Israeli officials, eighty-nine hostages—both living and dead—remain in Gaza. How must the remaining hostages feel this morning? Can God truly be all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowled...
Jan 27, 2025•7 min
On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump appeared via video conference in front of a packed crowd at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. In his speech, Trump stated that he believes the United State’s European allies “treat the United States very, very unfairly.” The problem with that line of thinking is that “fair” can be a rather nebulous concept. While there are a number of lessons we can take from the president’s speech and the global response, that understanding of fair...
Jan 24, 2025•8 min
The Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service was led by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. On Tuesday, the bishop made a direct appeal to President Trump to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” referring to the LGBT community and immigrants. These issues are both biblical and political, with complex implications for our society today. Was this appeal the right thing to do, or was it a missed opportunity to preach the gospel? Today we discuss our call as witnesses to the world an...
Jan 23, 2025•8 min
Request your copy of Wisdom Matters today! Roe v. Wade was decided on January 22, 1973. In response, this day each year is proclaimed “National Sanctity of Human Life Day” by pro-life supporters. When a woman aborts her child, she can typically do so privately: most abortions last year were the result of “medication abortions” rather than visits to an abortion clinic. What is true of abortion is true of most of our moral decisions. As a result, you and I have a personal role to play in protectin...
Jan 22, 2025•8 min
The inauguration of Donald J. Trump occupied center stage yesterday as he took hold of office as our forty-seventh president. The Times reported that the incoming president “wants to seize momentum” as he begins his administration. Mr. Trump was blunt about the challenges and problems he believes we are facing as a nation. But he also stated, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” In today’s article, we consider a statement from a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sermon: “Darkn...
Jan 21, 2025•7 min
Request your copy of Wisdom Matters today! TikTok went offline Saturday night after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law requiring its Chinese owner to sell the app by Sunday or face a ban. Then, after President-elect Trump said he would issue an executive order today to delay the ban, the company began restoring service. This is just one example of the power to be conferred on Mr. Trump when he takes the oath of office as our nation’s forty-seventh president. What is at the heart of that po...
Jan 20, 2025•6 min
