11.18.21   Grounding our Lives in Jesus Christ   To be grounded in Jesus Christ means that we are at peace no matter what our circumstances just because we know that He/God/The Holy Spirit are in charge of our lives and all that happens to us. We know that we can trust Him totally in everything. […]

  As we end the Lord’s prayer, our modern versions remind us that God is in charge of everything in His creation. We start with “Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” and end with “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever.!” God is […]

  In this line of the Lord’s prayer, we are admitting that we alone cannot withstand the pressures of this world. We need God’s help in steering us towards His kingdom, for we are surrounded and overwhelmed by the pulls and desires of the world. We ask because we are committing ourselves to living in […]

  We pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors [in the NIV, NSRV, KJV versions of the Bible].  It is not just debts, but, as other translations suggest, it’s our trespasses or sins, any way in which we disregard the person before us for our own gain. We may owe money to […]

  Our Father, give us this day our daily bread. Feed us. Nourish us. Provide what we need for sustenance every day. Our bodies and brains can’t exist long without the nourishment they need. So, this part of the Lord’s Prayer is our asking for what we need today, this day, so that we can […]

9.13.21 As Genesis 1:27 reports, “God created mankind in his own image.” Something of the Divine Spirit of God is implanted in each human being, but remains hidden deeply within us until we begin to orient our lives towards God. As we repent, turn towards God, leaving behind our oh-so-human ways and taking up a […]

  The Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 6] begins: “Our Father who art in heaven/Hallowed be your name.” Isn’t it interesting that it starts with ‘Our,’ not my Father, but our? Harking back to Genesis, when God created Adam in His image, God put something of himself […]

Over the last seven weeks I have been writing about the fruit of the Spirit. To me Paul is describing all the facets of love that we can aspire to in our lives, as we follow Jesus. These gifts from the Holy Spirit take us beyond human love which is very choosy about who is […]

As we deepen our lives in Christ, living more and more into the kingdom of God, we are leaving behind the obsessions of this world with money and power and prestige in favor of love, forgiveness and mercy. We are leaving behind our ego-obsession with how we look to our neighbors and friends in favor […]

The last fruit of the Spirit that Paul writes about in Galatians (5:22-23) is self-control (NIV, NRSV) also translated as temperance(KJV).  That sounds like an outward control of bad habits, but it’s more an attachment to Jesus’s teachings and His leading us to the kingdom of God than us controlling our own behavior.  Priorities change […]