Do you know that God chooses you? Time after time. No matter what, God chooses you. This kind of grace-filled love empowers us, don’t you think? Especially when we know that God said yes to us before we’ve said yes to him. God’s yes is pure grace. God chooses us because he loves us, not because we’d be so perfect or other wise noteworthy. Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what…
I caught myself in the middle of night asking “God, why do we need to die?” after dreaming of some people I was dearly missing. Instantly, I was reminded of what happened in my childhood. How I had turned from a sunny to sullen child after my grandmother’s death. My mother had asked me what’s wrong and I had told her ‘I hate God’. She asked me why I thought so. And I had told her ‘because he makes people…
Here’s what you need to know today and every day for the rest of your life: you are God’s beloved. Nothing will ever change it. You are God’s beloved, that’s your identity. For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. (Zephaniah 3:17, NLT) David G. Benner writes “What a…
Many of us want to be guided by God alone. It’s a wonderful concept, isn’t it? But how do you put it in practice in real life? How does God guide us these days? How can we live for God alone? The best advice comes from Jehoshaphat in the Bible: “But before you do anything, ask God for guidance.” (2 Chronicles 18:4, MSG,*) Whatever you do, start with asking God for guidance. Then your project is not in your…
Do you know how precious you are? Do you know your worth? Do you know how loved you are? I hope you do. Because you are all that and even more. You’re not a mere mortal, you are an eternal being called into life by God himself. You find your true worth and identity in Christ. God sent Jesus to die for us so he could save us and then lavish us with the immeasurable riches of his grace in…
Do you know the secret of peace and joy? It is leaving all your anxieties and insecurities at the foot of the cross and banking your life on Almighty God. Then you can dance in the front of fear. Then you can sing in the presence of evil. Then you can be confident when you’re out of your comfort zone. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. (Jeremiah 17:7, NLT,…
Did you know that Jesus did not die only for our salvation? According to the Bible he also died so that we would ‘die to sin and live to righteousness’ (1 Peter 2:24). Being saved by grace is not the end. It is the beginning of holy living. God hasn’t invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful—as beautiful on the inside as the outside. (1 Thessalonians 4:7, MSG) Grace does not excuse us from…
You’re ready to start letting Jesus take over your life, but you don’t know how to go about it. You’ve come to the right place. I will share some know-how of the process of decreasing right here, right now. If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms. (Luke 17:33, MSG,*) Surrendering your life to Jesus is a series of little deaths. Only…
On Monday’s post How to Seek Guidance we concluded that only when we are meek we are ready for God’s guidance. Otherwise we are not in a condition to apprehend his guidance. So we really want to become meek, right? How to do that? That’s the quest for today. First, I want to address what meekness is and is not. Then we talk about how we can become meek. Meekness is not weakness. Instead, Meekness is power under control as…
Are you impatient to wait for God’s guidance? Sometimes it seems to take forever. But I’ve learned it does not pay off to go before God. So I wait. Even when I don’t feel like it. I’ve been thinking and praying about this a lot. And learned a couple of things along the way and I will be writing about these this week. Matthew Henry has written “To wait on God is to live a life of desire towards him,…
