This image of making ourselves at home in God’s love just captured my heart today. Just think about it! God’s love is perfect. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes. God’s love never fails. And we are invited to make ourselves at home in God’s love! There’s nothing better on this earth that being at home in God’s love. “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my…
Is your faith an accessory or an addition to your life? Or is it the foundation of your life? Too often we push God and his will in the corner. Faith is nice and God makes us feel good but we leave it there. We go on with out lives without God and radical faith. “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words…
Do you have people telling you to splurge just because life is short? That the purpose of life is “to live a little, to enjoy luxury items, to get more toys, to have been there and done that”? “Because life is short and we live only once…why not to enjoy while we can?” That kind of talk leaves me confused. How about you? That kind of talk tells about emptiness and how utterly lost people can be. If we think…
How is your salvation-garden doing? I never thought of it this way before but reading the first chapter of James in the Message got me thinking. What if our lives really were meant to be salvation-gardens cultivated by God? Are we hindering God’s work? Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled…
The way to life – to God! – has been given to us in Jesus. The empty cross is a sign of victory over death and sin and brokenness. We are saved and guided to the way of Life by grace through faith in Jesus. We are not to look for shortcuts to God. There sure are plenty of empty promises floating around: quick answers, easygoing formulas for success and happiness. But those are not directing us to the way…
What does it mean to be on the Jesus way? How should your life look like? The important thing here is to get your faith applied and lived. It’s not enough to agree with the message, we need to put it in action. It’s not something difficult. Actually, a God-loyal life is very simple but the benefits are out of this world. A God-loyal life keeps you on track; sin dumps the wicked in the ditch. A pretentious, showy…
Before we can pray, “Lord, Thy Kingdom come,” we must be willing to pray, “My Kingdom go” says Alan Redpath. There really is no room for two kings in a kingdom. There is no room for two bosses in your heart, either. Someone must surrender. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action…
Over the weekend some of the quotes I tweeted got very enthusiastic responses from the tweeting community. I realized they have a common theme and thought I’d explore this a bit further. Especially when my daily Bible reading seemed to answer the yearnings of these quotes. “Life is too short not to spend it doing what God wants us to do.” (Jack Hyles) Life seems to fly by. The biggest threat seems to be that we don’t get anything done…
I always feel awkward when someone says “You can be anything you want to”, because that’s not true. We do have limitations. We are not gifted in all areas of life. We don’t have equal opportunities. But thank God that’s not the end of it. As MaxLucado has said: “You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be everything God wants you to be”. That is SO true! We can be everything God wants us to be!…
Why on earth would we need spiritual strength-training? The Merriam-Webster dictionary tells us that few definitions of strength are capacity for exertion or endurance, power to resist force, and power of resisting attack. These are all qualities needed in spiritual life! God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the…
