As we follow Jesus, one of the things we have to deal with is the attitude, “my way or the highway!” This attitude is ingrained in us as we grow up in our culture. We want things as we want them and not in any other way, shape, or form. This is one of the […]
As I have followed Jesus to the best of my ability, and with amazing help from the Lord, I had hoped that all the old tendencies in me to worry or judge or fear in any way would go away as God healed me of the issues that stood between me and Him. But, all […]
In this country any of our vulnerabilities are hidden, definitely not shared. We definitely wouldn’t want to appear lacking in any way. Any money problems would not be shared. Nor marital problems. We need to be seen in charge of everything in our lives, competent, directed towards a material goal. But hiding all our problems […]
It is not just through the blessings that we know God is in our lives; if that’s all we are interested in from God, then we are only interested in ourselves. Even more important than the blessings are the challenges that we experience throughout our lives and what God is trying to teach us through […]
In our country, we focus on our personal goals, we do our best to reach them, and we resent any disruptions of our work on those goals, be it a small one, like we’re rushing to meet a deadline and the traffic is slowing us down horribly, or a big one like the death […]
After giving my life to Christ now forty years ago, I am more and more convinced that our life here on earth is a school in which we learn how to love like God loves—if we are willing to learn from Him. We start with a belief in God, but we are called to go […]
Blessed are the Persecuted (Matthew 10-12), those who stand up to criticism, to denial, to violence, to imprisonment, to total rejection, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This Beatitude is a high bar for us humans, but fortunately, we have many saints who were martyrs in the history of our church who will show […]
It’s not enough that we’ve all had to deal with Covid-19 this year, but it seems that every family has had other big things to deal with, too—loss of a job, working at home and overseeing the kids’ schooling, other illnesses or deaths in the family, money worries beyond the normal. My daughter has had […]
The life in Christ is not without its challenges and uncertainties; in fact, it seems as if these provocations can loom even bigger when we have given up control of our lives and destiny to God. We won’t all have the challenges that Paul faced when he was spreading the Gospel around the Mediterranean Sea […]
As I began to wake up one morning a few months ago, it was on my mind that the more I wished blessings on someone else, family or friends or even unknown others, the more I would be reaping blessings in my life. This is a basic principle of the Bible by which our actions […]