A pastor reads a plain text on Sunday and watches the heads nod. Those same heads spend Monday through Saturday inside systems that contradict every word of it, and no one in the room notices.

No one announced the change. There was no vote and no argument. It happened a little at a time, in the things everyone simply assumed, until a generation grew up fluent in a way of thinking nobody had taught it to question.

These forty-six essays answer that, one question at a time. They were written for a congregation in Coden, Alabama, and they are gathered in six parts: The Gospel Foundation, The Idol Factories, The Harvest of Corruption, The Sanctuary Under Siege, Christian Witness and Manhood, and Answering the Hard Questions.

What is the gospel? What must I do to be saved? How do I guard my house? Can I trust the Bible I hold? Is Christianity a crutch? Where was God when the worst thing happened?

Every essay works the same way. The question is stated as the world states it, the Bible is opened, and the answer is drawn from the text rather than from a slogan. Where the Bible is silent, it says so and stops.

The cross exposes what no ideology will admit: what man is, what God has said, and what He has already done about it. The believer who sees that is not frightened by the headlines. He is settled, and he is useful.

With a preface by Pastor Travis Alltop of Bluegrass Pike Baptist Church, Danville, Kentucky.

Read it with your Bible open.