Are you a follower of Jesus? Good for you. It means you are striving to become more like him, right? Our calling and goal are to be more like Christ and act more like Jesus. But what does it mean exactly? How can we go about it? The best way is to get to know him personally and we can do that by reading the Bible. The gospel of John declares Jesus was full of grace and truth. So should…
Isn’t it interesting that sometimes a Bible passage sticks to you and keeps speaking to you? This happened to me with the story of the wedding in Cana. I blogged about the beginning of it last week but the story didn’t let go of me. So here I am blogging again about the same Bible story but from a totally different angle. So today I am writing about the fullness of joy which we find in Jesus. It is the…
Last week I shared that even Mary the God-bearer needed a Savior. We all do. But I get it that being called a sinner might not sound very uplifting. It might make you feel doomed. Well, according to the Bible you are doomed without a Savior. You’d be doomed without Christmas, without Jesus coming to rescue us. But because he did, being called a sinner can be comforting. What??? In the words of Martin Luther “When Satan tells me I…
Sometimes you hear people saying they don’t need to do anything because of grace. Sure, you don’t need to earn your salvation. Yes, it is all grace. But why would grace want to make you passive? Grace invites you into a loving relationship with your Savior, and living with Jesus does not make you inactive. Instead, grace makes you fruitful. I am the Vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him bears much…
Nobody wants to waste his or her life, don’t you think? We all know life is precious because it is so short and fragile. So we are to embrace it and make every moment count, right? If you ask different people how not to waste your life, you get varied answers depending on their values. How would you answer? I would probably have said something along the lines of Jesus “If you try to hang on to your life, you…
Do you ever wonder what God wants you to do? We might think God’s will must be something complicated so that’s why we don’t even try. That’s sad, isn’t it? Because then we miss our purpose as well. For a long time, I’ve been trying to figure out the simplest way to know God’s will for me. And, yes, it’s prayer, of course. But what kind of prayer, right? Let’s find out. And then, just the other day, I came…
It seems everyone is seeking peace and joy for themselves. And they are good things. But they are byproducts of obedience and faithfulness and not something we can reach on our own. How then can we go about them then? Simply put, when we seek Christ and keep him in our lives center, we are blessed with peace and joy. Paul Tripp has said, “Putting yourself in the center and making life all about you never leads to peace and…
As I am preparing to teach Christian Ethics starting next week, I have been thinking of holiness a lot. We are called to be holy like our God is holy, right? It is a tall order for human beings but there is no way around it. No one is excused from pursuing perfect holiness. The Bible clearly tells us to be holy over and over. My life experience tells me it’s undoable on my own. I need help. Thankfully, God…
John the Baptist was born as a miracle to elderly parents six months before Jesus. He was not named after his father because an angel visited him and told him he was to be called John instead (Luke 1:13). So there must then be a deep meaning to this name, right? So what does the name John mean? And what does that have to do with us? The English name John is the transliteration of the Greek name Ioannes, and the Greek…
When you walk with Jesus, you can’t hide your inner joy even though the world around you might not recognize the source of your strength, peace, and joy. If people are happy with superficial living, and just splashing on the surface, they will never find the treasures of deep grace diving. That’s a shame, don’t you think? Mainly because they can never find the pearl of deep-sea, Jesus. If you keep my commands, you will live in my love, just…
