Do you know how to be dressed in readiness? Then I want to hear from you. My word for the year 2015 is ‘readiness’ and I am trying to figure out what readiness means for me and how I could practice it more fully. Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit. (Luke 12:35, NASB,*) We are all called to be ready for Jesus. But readiness for Jesus means more than ‘just’ being saved. And that’s what I will be…
The second day of Christmas is a national holiday in Finland and many other European countries. This day is a great day to reflect what Christmas means in our everyday life. Do we have a stable influence of Christmas in our lives? It was great to celebrate baby Jesus and welcome him to the world. But what does it mean to us that Jesus was born 2000 years ago? It is time to put Christmas into practice! It is time…
Today I’ve been pondering on giving. What it is and what is is not. I don’t think we need expensive gifts but I do think we need extraordinary generosity. Material gifts do not bring happiness. But love and caring do. Because when we love each other, we are touched by God. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity. (Luke…
Yesterday at church a senior men’s choir sang a beautiful hymn at the end. It was so touching. I am sure I was not the only one with misty eyes in the audience. Not because of the words of the song. Not because the performance would have been somehow extraordinary. But because these older men were standing there and praising God with their song. After decades of hard life and difficult circumstances, they were still praising God. What a testimony….
I didn’t realize the word ‘hold’ is such a hope-filled and faith-saturated one. I was doing a search at Biblegateway.com and found an abundance of faith-affirming and uplifting verses that had the word ‘hold’ in them. Here are my favorites: Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands. (Matthew 10:28, MSG, emphasis added*) We…
Change is inevitable. Change happens all the time, sometimes we are able to notice it, sometimes not. Yet it happens all the time, it’s part of life whether we like it or not. Change can be overwhelming and frightful because we can’t control it. And that seems to be the root of all fear. We don’t want to lose control. What to do then? Paradoxically, the way to cope with change is to surrender all control to Jesus. When we…
‘Go tell it to the mountains’ was the first thing that went through my mind when I learned this week’s Five minute Friday prompt was ‘tell’. We are indeed commanded to go and tell everyone that Jesus has come for each of us. But are we really living out this command? How does is show in our everyday life? Ouch. “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this…
Too often we take life granted. We forget how fragile we are. We forget that we can’t control everything. We forget that there are not guarantees in life. And most of all we focus on the earthly things and forget God. We flirt with the destructive things and wonder why we don’t feel close to God. We are in danger of becoming enemies of the cross. As I have told you many times and now say with deep sadness, many…
Some people assume that God tries to take our freedom and restrict our joy. But they’ve bought the lies of the devil and they could not be further from the truth. Because God made us free. But we have been abusing the freedom by making bad choices from the start. Like Philip Yancey has said “God’s terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though He did not exist, to spit…
Are you a citizen of heaven? How does it affect your everyday affairs? Or does it? Maybe it should. Because if Christ is in you, everything changes. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christfrom the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells…
