If we could know only what our own physical senses have experienced, how impoverished our minds would be! Most of life’s crucial realities have to do with things that are unseen, and it is by faith that we apprehend these, the greatest of all truths.
The most powerful motive force in the world is a deeply felt appreciation for the forgiveness God mercifully makes available to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. We will truly love God only when we see something of the high price He has paid to love us.
To deny the obvious fact that our hearts long for God is to deny our Creator. Why don’t we see the depth of our need for God? How could something so important be so difficult to recognize? There are at least three reasons for our failure to see.
The decision to seek God with all of our heart can’t be made once-for-all and then forgotten. In every single moment of choice we must exercise our will one more time, deciding again and again to maintain integrity to what we know is most important.
If we fill God-created needs with anything less than God-designed fulfillments, the result is bound to be unsatisfying in the short run, and destructive to our character in the long run. Even when we get what we want, it will not be what we want.
The tiresomeness of temporal life is a clue to the fact that we were meant for more. There are many good things here to enjoy, but if we pretend that this world is all we need, we cheat ourselves. We must admit that we yearn for greater fulfillments.
“In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). As Pascal observed, “To know of God without knowing of man’s misery causes pride. To know of man’s misery without knowing of God causes despair.”
Resisting the tendency to focus on ourselves, we must learn to seek God, simply and contentedly. When we diligently do this, our reward will be God Himself and He will fill our deepest longings according to the design of His own love.
Combining the qualities of reverence and courage, love dares to seek God Himself. The deepest love in the human heart will settle for nothing less. It will not cease from its quest until it has found and known the Source from which it was created.
Sin destroys relationship, and since we were created for relationship, there is no impact of sin any more obvious than the deep, gnawing pain of isolation. In our broken world, there is no groaning more desperate than to be freed from our loneliness.
Given the problems that confront us (no less today than in the first century), it would be dangerous not to guard our faith carefully — there are none more vulnerable ...
In Christ, we live in great anticipation. And since we live in anticipation, we also live with focused concentration and resolute patience. Excited, enticed, and intrigued by the foretaste of ...
If we fail to use the opportunity which God’s grace has provided, the word “regret” will crush us with horrible force. There is no love more painful than the love ...
“Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Christ is the key to the ...
It may be that the truly “big” tests of life are the “little” ones, the many daily decisions that call for us to remember our promises to the Lord and ...
Shall we neglect such a great salvation and simply drift away from it? Whatever may have changed in our lives, here is one thing that will never change: the powerful ...
Oftentimes, wisdom hurts us before it helps us. Although its benefits are enjoyable, wisdom usually requires some painful adjustments — starting with the admission that our present situation is not ...
Ponder this statement by Eric Greitens, with which I agree: “Remember that deciding is not doing, and wanting is not choosing. Transformation will take place not because of what you ...
Jesus calls us to make a radical choice. The choice Israel needed to make was a prefiguring of the greater choice that confronts us today. The very worst decision we ...
God’s call to “Return to me, and I will return to you” (Zechariah 1:3) invites us to repentance, a choice only we can make. Despite past distance, God’s love and ...
What we need is not the “freedom” of more lawlessness, but to return to the will of God and find our rest therein. In comparison to the yoke of the ...
As Peter wrote to his beloved brethren, we should be “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12). Oh, to hear the glorious, triumphant ...