Humans are continually making paths from ideas they think will lead their tribe to making God happy and thereby receiving His blessing. Don’t eat meat. Don’t get married – stay single and focused on God. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t dance. Wear a head covering. Wear a beard. Don’t wear a beard. Wear long sleeves. Wear long dresses. Attend church meetings. […]
Jesus chose the cross. He chose miserable death over glorious life. After He partook of the lamb at the Passover meal, He stepped in line behind millions of lambs who had been sacrificed by Israeli families through the centuries. As He went forth from the table to the sacrifice, the weight of the cost became more clear than ever. When […]
Jesus saw driving demons out of people to be a Kingdom work. Because His Kingdom had appeared among the people of Israel, it was overpowering the kingdoms that were trying to usurp its authority and its power. The line between being part of His Kingdom, (obeying Him), and being part of opposition to it is not always clear. It is […]
Islam has found a place and a welcome in the land of the descendants of Ishmael. At its core, it is intent on destroying followers of Moses and of Jesus: forcing them to convert to Islam and its moon god, or be killed. The door that opened to that hatred can be traced to an elderly couple not being patient […]
Our God created humanity with an inherent desire for Him. Since being poisoned by the fruit of the tree of death, humanity has a greater desire for the knowledge of good and evil than we have for Him. All our arguments are likely to be reducible to contention about what’s right and what’s wrong. We disagree with each other about […]
After this, the Lord appointed 70 others, and He sent them ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place where He Himself was about to go. He told them: “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”(Luke 10:1-2 HCSB ©®) This is […]
Even if you have every right to be angry at someone, even if your desire for revenge is perfectly justified, even if someone you forgive for hurting you doesn’t care; doesn’t care about you; doesn’t care about the fact that you forgave them; and will probably proceed to hurt someone else, even if a hateful person broke your favorite toy […]
A rich young elitist asked Jesus what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus told him to obey the law. “I have done that,” was his reply to that instruction. Jesus then gave him two more instructions, to which he refused to surrender. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hung by Hitler’s thugs, wrote, “When Jesus calls a man, He bids […]
I labor for this, striving with His strength that works powerfully in me. So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to will and […]
David’s life was filled with mistakes that were greater in number and cost than Saul’s. In spite of this, He was called a man after God’s heart. He was allowed to worship in the holy place. He was given revelation. He was promised that Messiah would be one of his descendants. His throne would be the throne on which the […]