Nothing is to stand between us and God—not our own ego needs, not our cultural standards of behavior, not our family’s ideas about the choices we should make during our lifetimes, or how we should think. Nothing, if we believe in God and all his covenants and promises to us that the Bible […]

Over the last eight weeks I have been doing a series of blog posts on each of the Beatitudes. Today I just want to think through what living the Beatitudes, this core teaching of Jesus’s, means. In this series I have relied on Jim Forest’s image of the Beatitudes as a ladder.[1] He describes our […]

The fourth Beatitude, Blessed Are They Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness, is, to me, the heart of the Beatitudes. To step on this rung of the ladder, after acknowledging that we need God in our poverty of spirit, after mourning our losses and suffering, and after seeing ourselves as meek, just one of billions […]

The Sermon on the Mount is an insightful summary of Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels. And, to me, the Beatitudes show what the teachings lead us to—complete devotion to God. So this 8-week series will focus on each of the Beatitudes and relevant passages in the rest of the Sermon. I would group the Beatitudes […]

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me […]

  Jesus came into this world not just to bear and atone for our sin, but also to teach us, to show us how to live our lives as servants of God. So many of His teachings add to our understanding of God’s laws and go way the Ten Commandments, beyond the letter-of-the-law interpretations. He […]

2.15.21 God’s Love Expressed in Our LIves   I am convinced that we are to love, to value, to be interested in, to help everyone we meet. That is the way love works. If we follow Jesus, we are to engage with other people as love itself, God’s love, that is. It doesn’t matter if […]

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” [Matthew 11:28-30]   Jesus’s […]

I have just completed the editorial changes to my book that will be published sometime this summer, Called to Help the Poor and Needy. The book focuses on the 2,000+ Bible verses that command us to help the poor or needy person, the sick, the prisoner, the foreigner or stranger, the neighbor, basically anyone who […]

I’ve been following a journaling guide to Jesus’ Two Great Commandments for the last three weeks and it has been a rich journey into my relationship to God and its benefits in my life, its blessings and challenges.** Amazingly, this week I suddenly realized as I was journaling that the Lord had been leading me […]