To gain wisdom from our suffering in this life, our focus must not be on ourselves. The main object in life is neither to defend ourselves against suffering nor to exploit it self-righteously, but to seek a greater Truth outside of ourselves.
We are called to partake of God’s own nature. If sin’s damage is to be undone, we must not only be forgiven of our sins; we must be remade in God’s image. He has arranged for us to be crucified and recreated. To seek Him is to seek this very thing.
When we stay so long in one place that it feels like “home,” we may forget that our lease on this life is temporary. We quit dreaming about heaven, and we get to the point where we don’t want to let go of the things we’ve grown so accustomed to.
“Father, hear the prayer we offer: not for ease that prayer shall be, but for strength, that we may ever live our lives courageously.” While others pray to be excused from hardship, the wise pray for whatever strength faith’s journey may require.
Our hearts need an inside-out transformation. This is the goal God has in mind for us, and there is no shortcut to it. We should make sure that any impatience we have with our present imperfection does not turn into impatience with God Himself.
As we acknowledge our failures and our sorrows, various forms of self-righteousness can creep into our thinking. Secretly, we may come to look upon those whose lives appear more trouble-free as being somehow less spiritually mature than we are.
Let us not praise our present “clothing” more than the facts warrant. If we’re among His faithful people, Christ will one day clothe us in perfect glory. Our rags will be turned into riches. Until then, we need to be honest about our raggedness.
Events can seem so overwhelming it’s hard to not to feel like “dust in the wind.” And yet there remains within us a will that is free. When we make even a single choice to do what is right before God, we alter the course of history for the better.
The drastic rehabilitation Christ envisions is certainly not the work of one day. But just because we require more than a quick fix, that doesn’t mean we’re locked into our mistakes. “Beware of succumbing to failure as inevitable” (Oswald Chambers).
Jesus not only felt the full range of emotions that are the lot of humanity, but He felt them intensely and vividly. Genuine discipleship to the Son of Man will not turn us into unfeeling, insensitive robots. It will teach us to feel what God feels.
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 ...
We often reject ideas as being “untrue” for no reason except that we don’t want them to be true. But the more painful a truth may be to accept (at ...
Hope is a powerful thing. And one reason the gospel of Christ is the greatest of all messages is that it offers the greatest of all hopes. Here is the ...
In the New Testament, there are two phases or stages in obeying the gospel: first, we accept God’s forgiveness on His terms, and second, we live the rest of our ...