In areas where we may not understand the rationale for what God commands, let’s trust that God knows what He is doing. Because we have faith that God is wise and that He will never lead us astray, let’s obey whatever God’s will is.
We need to make the effort throughout life to grow deeper in the knowledge of what prayer should be. Indeed, there is more to learn about communicating with God than we could learn in a long lifetime. The challenge is to keep learning and growing.
Just as Israel was tempted to rely on other help other than what God provided, we may not place our total confidence in Him. We may be tempted to “supplement” our faith in God with a variety of earthly confidences: worldly wealth, wisdom, and power.
God expects us to grow to maturity in Christ, and we must decide to cooperate with His plan for our perfection in eternity. Spiritual growth is not optional. If we’re negligent or lazy right now, we can’t depend on grace to get us to heaven.
In the final analysis, what really are the components of genuine happiness? If we’re serious about answering that question, the account in Genesis 2 of Adam and Eve’s happiness in the Garden of Eden will be of more than passing interest to us.
As special as the relationship was that God entered into with the nation of Israel, that relationship was only meant to foreshadow and prepare for the even more special union between God and spiritual Israel, which is the church of Jesus Christ.
What is the meaning of the titles associated with the name of Jesus in the New Testament? Over sixty times He is called the “Lord Jesus Christ”? To see fully ...
God is at the center of both our problem and its solution. The gospel is not primarily about our broken social relationships. These are but symptoms of the real problem: ...
We were created for perfect joy with God, a joy not subject to change and decay. By our sin, the human race broke that perfection, but we still yearn for ...
Light is wonderful, but if we don’t respond to light obediently, the light will condemn us. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people ...
As in Jesus’ day, people today still “come to Jesus” for a confusing range of reasons. So let’s ask this: in the New Testament, who were those who came to ...
We can’t receive the benefits of the gospel ourselves and not want to do something to share those benefits with other people. In some kind of personal way, we should ...
Learning God’s character is a growth process that takes time. In Christ, we “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). ...
We would not have been baptized into Christ if we had not decided to die with Him. It was a choice. And our old self will not stay dead if ...
There is something special about the act of baptism. Whether we understand God’s reasons or not, He has made baptism the doorway separating the old from the new. In the ...
If broken trust in God is the root of sin, then for the problem of sin to be fixed, trust will have to be put back in its rightful place. ...
If we turn away from the gospel because of the costliness of the love involved in discipleship, there is nothing left but lesser loves — counterfeits that offer little more ...
In a “feel-good” age, it is hard for us to see that our first response to the gospel must be grief. Yet if the gospel is about sin, we are ...