How do Paul’s prayers help us learn how to pray? While Paul prayed for physical protection and he prayed for God to remove his thorn, the vast majority of his prayers written in letters interceded for the spiritual transformation of his readers. His example encourages us to pray for spiritual transformation, to focus on spiritual needs of people around us, and to see the wonderful spiritual gifts available from God.

Read More

God’s glory is revealed through people who serve Him. It begins with God and ends with God served. As we allow God to transform our spiritual selves, His love invades us and our worldview changes. We gain new eyes to see people as beings bearing God’s image, and we gain a new desire to serve. When we allow God’s love to flow through us, God’s glory is revealed to others, and those who experience God’s glory are in turn changed. It is all about love.

Read More

Why does Jesus connect loving Him with obeying His commands? Why does God the Father connect worship with obeying Him, and then double down on the thought by telling us to live in a manner befitting of association with Him? Why? Is God merely an overbearing ogre with nothing better to do? No. He loves us and He wants us to have the best possible life and our best possible life is lived in communion with Him. He desires that we experience His joy, His peace, His rest, His life abundant, His wholeness, and we are only able to do that through communion with Him through Christ Jesus.

Read More

People who live in relationship with God pray. Communication leads to and strengthens relationship. Scripture explains this in several different ways. It connects the concepts of abiding in God and allowing Him to abide in us with prayer. Loving God and obeying His commands are connected to effective prayer, as are humility and the pursuit of God. If our relationship with Him is such that we pray according to His will, our prayers will be effective. Similarly, Scripture discusses the desire to know God, the righteousness, faith and belief of the person who prays as significant parts of the formula for healthy prayer.

Read More

Scripture records two times Jesus joins Martha, Mary and Lazarus for dinner in Bethany, one early in His ministry and the other shortly before His final trip to Jerusalem. Let’s briefly look at each event, because through the descriptions provided in Scripture we see their progression in faith, we see their belief move from seeing Jesus as a friend and teacher, to Messiah, to the One who is truly the Son of God, the One with power and authority over death, the One worthy of their worship. Their understanding of Jesus as the Messiah progressed from concept to soul-filling reality.

Read More

As Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey, His soul was troubled. Surrounded by joyous cries of the crowd, the welcoming song of “Hosanna!,” Jesus saw their blind hard-heartedness. Just as He sees the condition of our hearts, He saw theirs. The words Jesus spoke to Isaiah are both a warning and a call. He warns regarding our propensity for blind hard-heartedness, and He calls us to recognize that others share our propensity so that we might, with kindness, mercy and compassion, share with them the good news of Christ Jesus.

Read More

Reading the Book of Daniel, it occurred to me that we have the benefit of Daniel’s full story. We see Daniel’s faith and God’s faithful deliverance time and time again, and with the benefit of his full story in our mind we might fail to appreciate the uncertainty Daniel experienced while living through the unfolding events. God knows how everything will fit together and conclude, but like us, Daniel did not. Through the book bearing his name we see that, while facing horrific circumstances, he continued trusting, obeying, praising, worshiping and thanking God.

Read More

The events leading up to the cross reveal the evil, darkness, awfulness of the world, and ugliness of humans. The events of the cross reveal God’s wrath as He pours it out on His Son, Christ Jesus, the sinless, righteous, holy, pure One. The only acceptable sacrifice for the sin of the world. On the surface we see darkness, sin, evil, suffering and wrath, but through the cross we see God’s mercy, love and holy grace revealed. Through the cross God reveals His glory. Through the cross we see love, light and life. Through the cross, through Christ Jesus, through God’s holy grace, God makes us alive. We move from death to life.

Read More

God has a miraculous plan for human transformation, for regeneration, for bringing dead people to life. While He transforms according to His sovereign plan, He often waits until we have traveled through darkness. It is often through darkness that His glory is revealed.

Read More

Jesus is God. He is the Good Teacher. Jesus is the Lord, the gate, the Good Shepherd. He provides wholeness, satisfaction, fullness, life abundant. David knew this life and wrote about it in Psalm 23. Do you? Have you experienced His green pastures, His good and merciful provision? May you enter through Him, may you know Him, may you follow Him, may you receive His life abundant, His mercy and His goodness. Amen.

Read More

God uses suffering to shake us up. He allows us to see that the things of this world are not worthy of our trust, and that only He is worthy. He alone is the rock, the foundation, our safe place, the One worthy. Through loss and suffering, God removes the façade, revealing the foundation of our faith – that in which we have actually placed our trust.

Read More

Each breath we take is a gift from God. Every moment we have on earth is a gift from God. I ponder it all seeing two sides of the coin. I see God’s sovereign power and grace and control, knowing that He’s got it. I also see the great responsibility we share as Christ Jesus sends us to go and bear fruit. Life is so incredibly short, what am I doing with the gift of life that I have? Our purpose is to glorify God on earth. How am I doing that today?

Read More

God created us for His glory. Our purpose is to reveal God’s glory to the world, and God is glorified through the fruit that is produced by branches connected to the vine, through the works that fulfill His will by those in whom Christ Jesus dwells and who dwell in Him.

Read More

God always sees everything. He is never fooled, so if we are trying to hide our behavior or ourselves from God, the thought is silly and comical because the notion of hiding from God is fundamentally absurd. It is also tragic because through Christ Jesus, God offers life. By running or hiding from Him, we are running or hiding from life, from satisfaction, from wholeness – we are running from the very quality of life everyone seeks, choosing instead to continue living as spiritually dead souls.

Read More

I invite you to consider your prayer life. When you pray for your friends, what is your prayer? We often focus on physical needs, which are temporary. Please consider Paul’s example and expand your prayer to focus on matters of eternal significance such as their spiritual condition, their relationship with God through Christ Jesus, and the harvest of righteousness produced through their efforts for God’s glory. May it all be for God’s glory. Amen.

Read More

On the evening of the Last Supper, Jesus spoke about joy. He taught so that His joy would be in the disciples and their joy would thereby be complete. And as He prayed, He spoke to the world so that people in the world would have His joy and their joy would thereby be complete. Our joy is made complete when Christ Jesus’ joy is in us.

Read More

God came to earth in the flesh. While describing who He is, He invites us to make use of everything He offers. He invites us to “come to” Him, “believe in” Him, “follow” Him, “remain in” Him and “bear fruit.” In response, He promises to lay down His life, to provide spiritual sustenance and light, and to serve as our path to the kingdom of heaven.

Read More

Thoughts of good and evil, life and death fill my mind as I turn to Paul’s epistle to the church in Ephesus. Paul writes to believers, followers of Christ Jesus, and he begins the passage above writing, “You were dead….” He declares it to be so for each reader, presenting a universal truth. You were dead through sin following the world’s path, following devilish powers, following “the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.” So a spirit exists that breeds disobedience and death through sin, and we each once followed that spirit and pursued our personal desires, passions and lusts, but God made us alive through Christ Jesus. But God gave us new life through Christ Jesus. But God saved us through Christ Jesus, through His loving mercy, through His grace, by bestowing faith upon us. We were dead and we deserve His wrath, but God did all this for us. We were dead, but God….

Read More

Our understanding of God and who we are in relation to Him drive our worldview. Our view of humanity, the world and our standing are dependent on our view of God. For example, if we believe God is nonexistent, our basis of morality is diminished, possibly erased, we begin to see humans as the ultimate authority on earth, and we begin to craft rules bound only by our desires. Scripture presents God as eternally present with characteristics beyond our ability to describe or understand. His power is beyond the capacity of our language and minds – He created all matter in the universe out of nothing by uttering the word making it so (see Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 11:3). He is holy, pure, divine, love, wrath, and the standard upon which everything rests, but each word rings hollow because our language is too limited to communicate the heavenly, our points of references are limited to this world, and our minds lack the bandwidth.

Read More

Jesus came to plant oaks of righteousness. He came to free people from captivity, from oppression, and from injustice. Through Jesus, you have been delivered from bondage to this dark world and introduced to His holy light. Through Jesus you have been planted as an oak of righteousness. May you grow into the mighty oak God has planned for you to become according to God’s will for your life. Amen.

Read More