The Beauty of Jesus (1)
The beauty of Jesus was more than being physically attractive; as a matter of fact, the Scriptures tell us that He did not have that kind of face. “When we shall see Him there is no beauty the we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). He did not stand out from other men as a
The Note
A tuning fork sounds the right note. If you tune to it, the music can begin. Jesus is the Note which God has sounded for the human race. We are to tune our lives and our Christian communities to that Note, or as E. Stanley Jones reminds us, “Be a part of the chaos”.
Hidden Faults
We do not know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. Who we are and what we have become is always unfolding to us, like the turning of the pages of a book. We have faults rooted in our DNA. We have faults that were engrained in us by imperfect families and
In Good Hands
The Psalmist describes the Lord as a Keeper who protects and guards. When we give our lives over to our Father, we are in Good Hands! He will do us no harm. He will work His will in circumstances that seem totally against us. We wonder if we will survive, and all the time
The Reaching-Out God
God has a thousand ways to get to the open heart. He even makes constant overtures to the closed heart. He reaches out through the grace of the Spirit. He comes in prosperity and adversity, sunshine and rain, joy and pain, grief and happiness, worship and communion, loneliness and companionship, etc. Be attentively aware
The Wisdom Of Christ
A truly wise person knows the answers to questions that they do not even know that they know. To know Jesus is to know the One who has been made unto us Wisdom (I Corinthians 1:30). We find in Him the answers to: What is God like? What is the way to the Father?
Desire For Power
Sadly, the desire for power and control rears its ugly head in the church from time to time. Jesus clearly taught that the presence of “lording it over” had no place among His followers. Yet, it continues. Some, in the name of “protecting the church,” change the essence of what the church is meant
Forgive Anyway
It would be nice if all the people who have trespassed against us would have come running to our feet and, bowing before us, asked for forgiveness. Most of the time, that does not happen. Sometimes a person does not know they have offended us, though maybe they should have known. Jesus forgave from
Truth Sources
The Lord often speaks to us through the words of family and friends. Our pride would prefer that He speak to us, as important as we are, with an audible voice. That is exceedingly rare. He speaks His wisdom to us from unlikely sources and through unlikely persons. We must not despise the message
You Have Followers
We do not like to say, “Follow me as I follow Jesus,” but that should be our goal. We are always being followed by someone. We are always influencing other people’s decisions and actions. We are stewards of our own influence. It is not to be taken lightly. We are “our brother’s keeper”. We
Revived By Words
“This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your word has revived me” Psalm 119:50 (NASB). How do we get through the tough times in our lives? It must be more that grit and stoic determination. There is a better way. We get through it with the words of God. When life goes out
Moving Mountains
Context is everything. The context of a faith and prayer that moves mountains (Mark 11:22-25) is about prayer offered from a forgiving heart. "And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). It is impossible to move
God Is Altogether Good
God is Light and not darkness. God is good and not evil. He can do no evil and promote no evil, because He is good. God is the giver of grace. It is freely given to all who will receive it. The Father is the giver of the Spirit and freely gives to those
He Claims Us
“So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. For he said to God ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among your assembled people’” (Hebrews 2:11–12 NLT). The
Counter-Kingdom Ism’s
We do not like it when the gospel of the Kingdom makes us confront our tendencies toward, consumerism, materialism, hedonism, elitism, cronyism, racism, sexism, and nationalism. We pick scriptural interpretations and theologies that let us avoid them. Only a Spirit-inspired shakeup can get us out of these Kingdom-killing ways. Only a protracted time of
Knowing the Will of God
Do not think you can know the will of God apart from a willingness to do it. A surrender to the will of the Father becomes a way of knowing. To become a living sacrifice is the path to discerning the mind of God. Full consecration may end your confusion and uncertainty. A mind
Humans Need God
It is not possible to be fully human without connection to the Creator God. We were made in the divine image and for fellowship with God. To try to achieve this without Jesus is an exercise in futility. Jesus models what it is to be human and offers redemption and atonement to get us
God Has Conspired
To love those who hate Him, To do good to those who abuse Him, To serve those who fight against Him, To embrace those who shun Him, To accept those who reject Him, To extend peace to His enemies, To find those who are willfully lost, To lift those who have chosen the mire,
Being Like Our Rabbi
We have reduced the word disciple to student or learner. What we do not know is, a disciple who followed a Jewish rabbi had one goal in mind, that he might be exactly like his rabbi, not just in his teachings, but in the way he lived. They memorized his words and were always
Jesus is Enough
The disciples are constantly worried about not having enough resources. Jesus has just fed 4,000 people, and the disciples are fretting over no bread in the boat. The whole point they were missing, the thing that they could not see nor understand, was that Jesus was the one who could meet their need for
Truth Endures
The Bible asserts the enduring power of truth: “His truth endures to all generations” (Psalm 100:5, 117:2). Truth is found in surprising spots, in unorthodox places; even nuggets of it are found in distorted religions, godless cultures, and ethnic groups that do not look or think like us. We do not have a corner
A Worthy Manner
We are admonished to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”. Paul wrote to Timothy, "Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity" (2 Timothy 2:19b NKJV). It is not enough to avoid evil, we are to walk with a motive to please Him. We are to intentionally follow His
Bondage or Worship
Sin blinds to truth. It will cause us to rationalize wrong behaviors; it will make us find ways to justify it to others. All sins conceal idols; the failure to worship is only a symptom of that. Worship will keep us from sin and sin will keep us from worship, Adam and Eve hid
The Christian Way of Living
We have put ourselves in the untenable place of trying to defend our moral and ethical stances to a secular culture apart from Christ being the focal point of one’s life. He is why we do what we do, why we avoid what we avoid and why we pursue what we pursue. The world
Finding Rest
The heaviest burden we have to bear is our own un-surrendered self. Jesus’ burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30) — but ours can be killing us. Ego is crushing; pride is devastating. Ego must be nailed to the cross. “Bear yourself as a burden and it will always be too heavy” (Thomas Merton). It