Forgiveness is hard. Living forgiveness is ever harder. But we don’t have much choice if we want to have tender hearts and live fully. And the Bible is pretty adamant about forgiving too. This is what Jesus told us: “Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’…
What matters in faith journey is what we do when we fall short. Do we deny our shortcomings and start pretending to be what we are not? Or do we run to Jesus? Why is this so important? Because if we keep from admitting that we are sinners, we harden our hearts. Blessedly this is not the end of the story. God can change our hearts, we just need to ask God for forgive our sins. And I will give…
Do you pray daily? Or do you save it for special occasions? Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread. He told us to ask daily for anything we need, nothing more, nothing less. God is our heavenly father who wants to take care of our needs and sustain us to victorious living. (But realize that Jesus advised us to ask for our needs not wants.) Give us today the food we need. (Matthew 6:11, NLT) Mary DeMuth wants us…
Jesus prayed “as it is in heaven” knowingly. He knew what it is like in heaven and he wanted us to lift our eyes from the ground up to heaven. This world is not all there is. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite…
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…
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….
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…
Jesus taught us to pray “Our father in heaven”. As Mary DeMuth points out there are no singular pronouns in the entire Lord’s prayer. Jesus did not say MY father, he said OUR father. We are all included in the prayer. We are all God’s children. We are a community of God’s beloveds. And that’s how we should pray too. Communally. For each other. For those difficult people. Because that’s what being a family is meant to be. And we…
What do you do when you are crushed? How do you react to devastating news? How do you cope in the midst of uncertainties? Your answer defines your way of living. What we do when a catastrophe strikes makes us or breaks us. One of the most important life skills is to know how to handle hardships. Mary DeMuth points us into the right direction in her new book The Wall Around Your Heart “So in whatever circumstance we walk,…
At the end of life your heart will be either hard or tender. You can be either bitter or better, despite what has happened to you. Really. Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23, AMP) We are called to guard our heart. We are called to ooze love and grace. But how can we if our hearts have been walked on? How can…
