Do you love God more than anything? And do you surrender to Jesus daily? Your will, your strength, your heart, your mind, your body, your soul, your spirit, your everything? That is a tall order, isn’t it? Are you truly willing to give up your own children, even your own life, to follow Jesus? Because that is what he expects you to do. Are you ready to give up everything to follow Jesus? With the words of Jesus: Simply put, if you’re…
We all love blessings, right? The more the better, I think. A blessing is a favor of God and a life full of blessings is the best kind of life, isn’t it? But don’t fool yourself. God’s blessings are most often not materialistic and temporal but spiritual and eternal. Somehow, that diminishes the ranks of people who want them. We’d like to have a new car and money enough to control our destiny. But that’s not how it works. Spiritual…
For a long time, whenever I was reading a list of spiritual gifts, the spiritual gift of martyrdom – the divine enablement to undergo suffering for the faith even to death – puzzled me. Of course, even then I knew a multitude of Christians have been martyred ever since the early church and persecution is still a factor around the world. I’ve always admired the martyrs and thought they’ve possessed something I don’t have. Where I did go wrong was…
It is amazing how God is fully present – through his Holy Spirit – in our lives. It is a mystery and a wonder and we can’t really fully understand it yet. Nonetheless, it is true. If you have not experienced it yet, ask for it. Ask God to come into your life so clearly that you can see it and feel it. Christ came to be with us and now the Holy Spirit continues to do that. God is…
Do you have a lot of “shoulds” in your life? You should this and that and every other thing. The first step of letting go of shoulds is to change your vocabulary. Replace all the “shoulds” with “it’d be great if”. It’d be great if all things worked out. But if not it’s not the end of the world. This is all great and has helped me to put less pressure on me but I have even better news for…
I openly admit that I love reading the Bible, I believe it’s the living Word of God. People often tell me that they don’t have time to read the Bible. But I think anyone can commit to reading a verse (or two) every day. It won’t even take a minute to do it. Yet, it has an eternal impact on our lives. It reminds us what is important and what is not. Let me give you an example. Just reading today’s verse of…
It is quite a faith journey to learn to celebrate your weaknesses. Celebrating is not our first response to our weaknesses. But that’s what the saints who have gone before us have taught us. First, the apostle Paul and then many others. Watchman Nee summed it up this way “Outside of Christ, I am weak; in Christ, I am strong.” We truly are weak in ourselves but so strong in Christ. Hence, we don’t need to hide our weaknesses but…
The resurrection story never gets old: it holds the miracle of salvation. I love hearing it again and again, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and all them in different translations. Because there is always something to catch my attention anew, always something to stir in my heart. This time I realized the stone was rolled away for you and me. Not for Jesus. He did not need it to be rolled away, he had already risen. The stone for rolled…
Resurrection makes all the difference, folks. Without the resurrection, we’d be without hope. Life would be just life, no hope for broken hearted. No hope for sick and unhappy. And, certainly, no hope for sinners. Blessedly, God knew better. He knew we needed him even when we did not know we needed him. Hence, he sent Jesus to die for us. Jesus came to friend us, teach us, and save us. Because Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected,…
What a holy day Good Friday really is. Still it’s hard to understand what Jesus really did for us. The amount of suffering is beyond our imagination. Yet, he did it. Jesus died the most brutal death so we could be forgiven and made right with God. Such love. And, think, all we can do is to receive it and let it change us inside out. What wondrous love is this? He personally carried our sins in His body on…
