Do you know it is possible to hope even when there is no hope? I was stunned by this discovery as I was once again reading the fourth chapter of the letter to Romans. That’s where Paul reminds us of Abraham as an example of faith. How Abraham did not focus on his impotence but on God’s competence. Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping (NLT). Hoping against hope, he believed (NRSV). For Abraham, human reason…
Are you trying to be holier than Jesus? A shocking question, isn’t it? But – Lord, have mercy – unfortunately a valid one. With the words of Brennan Manning “Christians have an unfortunate tendency to be preoccupied with the trivial”. When we occupy our time with being just right with every little trivial thing, we are trying to be holier than Jesus. But that is never possible. And Jesus did not have a condemning attitude. He oozed love and grace….
Are you interested in doing the will of God? If you are reading this I assume that’s the case. With the words of Elizabeth Elliot “The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.” Hence doing the will of God is following Christ. Mary DeMuth helps us to understand better…
This is a bit funny post but couldn’t help it. The writing prompt today for Five Minute Fridays is “write”. And the one thing that entered my mind was a famous country song “Write This Down” by George Strait: “Baby, write this down, take a little note to remind you in case you didn’t know, Tell yourself I love you and I don’t want you to go, write this down. Take my words, read ’em every day, keep ’em close…
What do you think? Does God care what you do on your free time? Are there consequences for your actions? We would like to think that our body, soul, and mind are ours to do what we please. But the Bible tells us differently. If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us…
Living out faith seems fun and easy when things go well. But what are we supposed to do when things don’t go so well? Still keep going strong? But how is it possible? The trick here is….we are not to lean on our own strength…but on God’s strength. We are not to thrive on our own…but to let God empower us. Then it’s not about good times or tough times. It’s about kingdom living. It’s about Christ living in us….
I think we all grave authentic living, being true to ourselves. We want to forget faking and hiding behind masks. But do we dare to do so? Do we dare to bare our souls to others? Are we finally ready to admit that we are not perfect? Not only to ourselves and people around us but also to God? Like he would not know everything already, right? Like God would want us to be anything else but our true selves….
I’ve always thought that comparison is from the devil. So I smiled wide when I reached the chapter five of Kurt Bubna‘s new book Epic Grace, Chronicles of Recovering Idiot . The chapter is titled “The Curse of Comparison”. My thoughts exactly. “Comparison is a trap because it feeds either the beast of pride or the monster of insecurity”, Kurt writes “Either way, we lose”. We really do lose by comparing ourselves to others or to an unreachable standard. That’s…
Lately I’ve been thinking how our faith could be expressed in love. You know, even the Bible tells us that our faith should be activated through love. How can we do it? Because it’s not so easy. Life is messy and relationships complicated. Our initial response in life, unfortunately, is not often love. So. What to do? How to get from war to love, from angst to alleluia? For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion…
Do you wear glasses regularly or do you need reading glasses? What a blessing it is to have a way to see clearly, isn’t it? Otherwise everything is a bit blurry. Hard to focus, hard to see. That’s exactly the way it is in our spiritual life too. It’s hard to focus, hard to understand what’s what. We need spiritual reading glasses to see clearly. Especially when we read the Bible. Otherwise we miss the wonderful things in it. Let…
