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…
How to build our lives on God? That’s the question. By following the example of Christ is the quick answer. But let’s try to find some blueprints for building our lives on God. The sixth chapter of the letter to Romans give us some advice. For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him]. (Romans…
Are you broken? What do you think? Could there be any beauty in brokenness? Yes, there can be. Especially if we surrender all the pieces to God. He is ready to create something new out of the messes of our lives. We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. (Romans 8:28, VOICE) Kurt Bubna in his new…
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…
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…
