Teaching us to “deny ungodliness,” grace says “we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” Grace is the most motivating force in the world. Forgiven of our past acts of rebellion against God’s love, we respond gratefully.
We must move away from self-centeredness. Holiness, like happiness, is a by-product of seeking something more important than concern for ourselves, namely the glory of God. Our principal focus must be kept on Him and on serving others in His name.
Our needs are known to our Heavenly Father before we ask Him. But He wants us to have the humility to recognize those needs ourselves and to ask for His help. The deeper our gratitude for His grace, the more faithfully we will ask and seek and knock.
The time will come when the best of the good ideas that we’ve had will come true. We’ll find ourselves not merely thinking about God but knowing Him. And in God, what we’ve always wanted to be is what we actually will be!
God will not be misled. He is not looking for verbiage but for hearts willing to be transformed. And if our hearts are not willing to be turned toward Him, then no amount of “image management” will get us where we want to go.
If we’re not comforted by the availability of God’s grace, we bog down in despair. But if we fail to be humbled by the necessity of God’s guidance and help, we bog down in something even worse: the illusion that we’re doing better than we really are.
Having a need for God, as every human being does, we need to admit that need and feel it. As the years go by, we should more truthfully understand, more lovingly feel, and more honestly acknowledge that we need our God.
We may be impressed with what Jesus’ miracles say about God’s existence, and we may even understand that they are evidence of His power and authority. However, we don’t always see what these signs say about God’s nature and His purposes.
In the end, it will be seen that our outward actions were the result of our knowledge of God — or the lack of that knowledge. This knowledge is the soil out of which our lives grow, and if the soil is barren, our harvest will not be bountiful.
God has given each of us our abilities because those are the resources needed to do the work that belongs to us — right where we are. It’s tempting to think we could do a better job if we occupied someone else’s place, but that is probably not true.
We must learn to do what is right because it is right, and not because it will turn earthly events in our direction. The sooner we give up our “comprehend ...
As Christians we will fall short and our only hope of salvation is in God’s grace. But forgiveness requires godly sorrow and repentance. In the absence of “a broken and ...
If the gospel is true, it is the most important truth in the world — and it is worth being defended. Just as surely as the gospel is preached, there ...
In regard to God, we must say a decisive Yes! — or we’ll not like where we end up. As I heard someone say, “God lives upstream from us, and ...
Confessing Christ goes beyond saying the words “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” Truly believing it, that truth must be confessed in our deeds as well as ...
Our motivation today needs to like Paul’s. My own prayer is that I obeyed the gospel in order “that I may gain Christ and be found in him . . ...
What Jesus showed His disciples from the Hebrew Scriptures is that (a) the Messiah would suffer, (b) He would rise from the dead, and (c) repentance for the forgiveness of ...
There is not one of us who won’t have to account for himself or herself before Christ at the judgment. That accounting will be an absolutely accurate assessment of our ...
It takes faith to accept whatever the Lord commands in cases where what He requires goes against our preferences. But if we don’t trust the Lord enough to comply with ...
There is nothing about our broken relationship with God that Jesus Christ cannot repair, no void in our hearts He cannot fill. He is God, who came from heaven to ...
God, our Creator, loved us and saved us, not from a distance but by becoming one of us. Jesus, as God in the flesh, is our Lord, but He is ...
When we study Jesus, is it not His combination of passion and purity that is so powerful? As with all His other characteristics, the blend of these two in such ...