Posted: December 19, 2024
Jesus offers peace: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.”1 Don’t look for peace in this world. You won’t find it. So, how can we be at peace in a nonpeaceful world? By living righteously. Doing the right thing—not the correct
Continue Reading “Righteous Living”
Category: Blog
Posted: December 12, 2024
Nicodemus was intelligent and respected. He was a leader, “a ruler of the Jews.”1 He had heard that Jesus was upsetting his colleagues with his pious words about the temple. Jesus had caused an uproar there by overturning tables and driving everyone out. He was speaking disrespectfully to the Jews and creating confusion. Nicodemus had
Continue Reading “How Can These Things Be?”
Category: Blog
Posted: December 5, 2024
When people talk about freedom, it’s generally in the context of government and country. Jesus talked about freedom. But his freedom is much broader. It is spiritual freedom, which is misunderstood and downplayed and even dismissed by many people. It is, however, the most important freedom that we have. One time when Jesus was talking
Category: Blog
Posted: November 28, 2024
Paul’s letter to the Colossians is one of thanksgiving. In chapter 1 he begins, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.”1 He challenges the church to be strengthened by God’s power, “giving thanks to the Father,”2 because he has given us an inheritance—the kingdom of God.
Continue Reading “And Be Thankful”
Category: Blog
Posted: November 21, 2024
After Job lost his children and his house and his livestock and many of his servants and finally his health, “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.”1 Wait. What? I thought Job was a man who held “fast his integrity.” A man who was “blameless and upright, one who feared God
Continue Reading “Lamenting to God”
Category: Blog
Posted: November 14, 2024
On a mountainside in Galilee, Jesus preached a message known as the Sermon on the Mount. We read, “Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them.”1 About two thirds of the way through the sermon, he
Continue Reading “What More Are You Doing?”
Category: Blog
Posted: November 7, 2024
According to the Pew Research Center, “About nine-in-ten U.S. adults believe in God or another higher power, including 54% who say they believe in “God as described in the Bible” and 34% who say they don’t believe in the biblical depiction of God but do believe there is “some other higher power or spiritual force
Continue Reading “Truly, truly.”
Category: Blog
Posted: October 31, 2024
The Israelites knew God. They had seen him. They were witnesses to his signs and miracles. They promised Moses that they would do whatever God wanted them to do. But when they sat on the edge of the Promised Land and Caleb told them that they would have to fight to get in, they said
Continue Reading “Halloween Message”
Category: Blog
Posted: October 24, 2024
In a yoga class, participants are encouraged to empty their minds and become “void minded.”* We often think of the word “peace” as a state of mind. My friend Merriam-Webster defines it as a state of tranquility or quiet. But that’s not how the peace of God works. Paul writes in Philippians: “And the peace
Continue Reading “Peace Rules”
Category: Blog
Posted: October 17, 2024
The day Job lost his 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels and 500 oxen and 500 donkeys and all but three of his servants and all seven of his children, he “tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and
Continue Reading “Hold On Loosely”
Category: Blog
