Lent is a perfect time to get an annual spiritual check-up. How is your hearing? How is your vision? How is your spiritual heart-beat? Are you doing OK? “Look! I’m standing at the door and knocking. If any hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to be with them, and will have dinner with them, and they will have dinner with me. ” (Rev. 3:20 CEB) Jesus is knocking. Can you hear him? Or is your…
Oh, how few find time for prayer! There is time for everything else, time to sleep and time to eat, time to read the newspaper and the novel, time to visit friends, time for everything else under the sun, but – no time for prayer, the most important of all things, the one great essential! ~Oswald J. SmithTo be much for God, we must be much with God. Jesus, that lone figure in the wilderness, knew strong crying, along with…
Are you serving out of love? Or are you helping people because you expect a praise or a reward? Do you ask -like Jesus- “What do you want me to do?” Or is your motivation based on what you can get out of the situation/relationship? It’s time for a motivation check-up. Why do you serve? Or should I ask: Who do you serve?Don’t work to make yourself look good and try to flatter people, but act like slaves of Christ…
Even though the world around us is full of marks of death and dying we try to deny our own mortality. We like to live in La-La Land and pretend we are not aging and our life will go on forever. But the sooner we face the reality: we are dust and we will return to dust, the better we can embrace living fully. Like a parent feels compassion for their children— that’s how the LORD feels compassion for those…
“The New Testament word for repentance means changing one’s mind so that one’s views, values, goals, and ways are changed and one’s whole life is lived differently”, J.I. Packer states. “The change is radical, both inwardly and outwardly; mind and judgment, will and affections, behavior and lifestyle, motives and purposes, are all involved. Repenting means starting a new life.” Lent is a blessed time: we can slow down and actively reflect on our spiritual journey. We can chance the course…
Happy Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday! Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday that marks the beginning of Lent. The season of Lent is a special time when we are called to prepare our hearts and minds to Easter. Some people give up something (meat, sweets, TV etc) for Lent and some take something on (f.e. a certain spiritual discipline) for this period of 40 days before Easter. The main idea is to seek God and let him show what areas of our lives need…
Somehow we humans want to be better than we are. We’d like to be perfect. But we are not. There’s no one without fault. “There’s not one totally good person on earth, Not one who is truly pure and sinless.” (Ecc. 7:20, MSG) God knows this. That’s why he sent Christ to the world. So we would have a way back to him. Because we could never make it on our own. Why is then that we’d like to fake…
“Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart”~Martin Luther “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.”~ Phillip Brooks But you, dear friends, carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in the Holy Spirit, staying right at the center of God’s love, keeping…
Recently I’ve been wondering how Spirit-filled life of a follower of Christ should really look like. I am certain that being a Christian does not just mean being nice. Yet, so many of us live their lives according to our own fancies and the expectations of the society. We might do some good deeds here and there to feel good. But we are not radically altering our lives. Life as we know it is easy, comfortable, and safe. And we…
Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? Do you have hard time believing that you are truly forgiven? We proclaim -often without thinking- in the Apostolic Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins”. But do we really, really believe? Do we live in the joy of forgiveness? Because being free is what Christian living is all about. If we are still carrying the burdens ourselves, we are not truly trusting God’s grace to do its job. We have…
