Jesus Knocking

As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be committed and repent. Listen! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and have dinner with him, and he with Me. (Revelation 3:19-20 Holman Christian Standard Bible ®©) Jesus is committed to you. He is […]

Wanting and Doing

You are important and valuable. Your life is important and valuable and powerful. How could any alternative be true when it is Yahweh, Who breathed the stars and universes, Who works in you to want to do what is righteousness and to be enabled to do what is righteousness (Philippians 2:12-13)? Go be awesome.

Potentially Powerful

James wrote that faith without works is dead (James 2:26). Paul wrote that in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). Potential in a battery is power that is latent. It could produce work, but not unless it is connected properly in a circuit with a load that can do […]

Your Shepherd’s Voice

On days, Yahweh is in your face with power and fire. On other days, He seems to be hiding, and the only communication you sense seems to be a quiet, garbled whisper. Further complication comes when He uses another person to communicate with us. Finding the thread through all of that which is like you “knowing your Shepherd’s voice” can […]

Witnesses

All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us. Therefore since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, […]

We’ll All be Changed

Frequently there is a battle between Yahweh’s desire to change us and our desire for Him to change our circumstances. It is difficult to imagine in the heat of that battle that He really wants to change us and our circumstances, but will only do it in His preferred order – when we accept being changed, He moves us into […]

Have Faith

Faith is weird. How do you get some? After you somehow find out after something went well that you actually had it (you think), how to you increase the amount of it that you have? What is it, even?? Maybe faith is doing something to prove you believe something. Sometimes it seems like faith is doing nothing, but in those times faith maybe […]

Rod and Staff

I don’t have lots of confidence in English translators to figure out what David meant by “rod” and “staff” in Psalm 23:4. Sometimes they translate the word they translate here as “rod” in other places as “staff”. No matter… Herders needed one tool with a crook at the end of it to grab an animal by the leg and pull it […]

Shared Victories

What is your typical response when your good works are rewarded with evil consequences? Sometimes it seems when that happened to individuals whose lives are recorded in the Book, that the justice they received was not an immediate vindication. In the lives of Joseph and of the 3 friends of Daniel: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (who are sometimes better known by […]

Growing or Dying

When a basil plant, which has delicious leaves, starts to produce flowers, bees and other pollinators cause the flowers to produce seeds. When the flower has done that, the plant starts to die. The plant thinks that its purpose is to reproduce, so when it has built the engine that can accomplish that – the seeds – it thinks its […]