In Creole country, there is a beautiful proverb which says, “Tell me whom you love, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Today, let’s meditate on those whom we love — let’s resolve to love them more purely, strongly, tenderly . . . and lovingly!
Things like character growth should have a higher priority than ease and pleasure. And if the goodness of something is judged by what it does for our character, we’d have to say that challenges and tests should be placed in the good category.
Continuous improvement requires paying honest attention to where we are, daily examining the worthiness of our goals, actively learning things that we don’t yet know, and never ceasing to pull our performance up the level of our ideals.
Many wonderful doors open to us when we learn the simple habit of willingness. We can consciously open our hearts to the things that are ours to do, even those that are obligatory, and when we do, everything takes on a much better appearance.
As undesirable as ignorance is, there is something worse, and that’s a lack of integrity. Asking a question should mean not only that we want to know the truth about something; it should also mean that we want to do what’s right about that truth.
Some people run from hard work as if it were a disease. You’d think that work is undesirable, something to be done only if there is no other choice, and not a minute longer than it takes to get it over with. This is an unfortunate misconception.
What people want is for us to be comfortable in our own skins, to work hard at being the best “us” we can be, and to extend ourselves to them naturally and honestly. Most folks find snapshots more endearing than glamour shots.
We all need to have “comfort zones,” but we can’t stay inside them all the time. There may be a good deal of coziness, but there’s very little learning, and learning is an unavoidable necessity if there’s going to be any progress in our lives.
When others know that we can be counted on, and that when we’ve failed to do what’s right, we’ll spend our time making restitution rather than making excuses, they will find a security in their relationship with us that can’t be found any other way.
No matter how richly textured they may be in other ways, if our characters haven’t been made more worthy by the acquirement of virtue, then we’re still paupers. To be rich, in the long run, simply means to do what is right.
The gospel does not deal in superficial solutions. According to Jesus, the problem is not just our dysfunctional behavior — it is us. It is in the deepest depths of ...
It is simply not true to the Scriptures to say that a prayer like the “Sinner’s Prayer” is sufficient. We don’t find in any of the conversions to Christ in ...
For eternal salvation, where else can we go but to Jesus Christ? As Peter said when Jesus asked him if he and the other disciples were going to turn away ...
When, at judgment, we hear the Lord say the worst words imaginable, “Depart from me,” fellowship with God will then be out of our reach. But for the time being, ...
If we’re not willing to see (1) what God teaches us in the Scriptures, (2) the true status of our relationship with God, and (3) the true motives behind the ...
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And lest I think of “sinners” as the whole human race, I need to understand this: if I were ...
The gap between the events in Jesus’ life and the books recording those events was not two or three centuries; it was only a few years. The last of the ...
What sense would it make for evangelists of the faith in the first century to hang their whole case on the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the events in ...
The Bereans in Acts 17 had the right idea. They listened eagerly as Paul argued that Jesus was the Messiah, but as they listened they were “examining the Scriptures daily ...
What distinguished Zacchaeus from so many others who crowded around Jesus was not that he was lost, for every person Jesus ever met fell into that category. But Zacchaeus recognized ...
The “gospel” is the greatest of all proclamations: not one concerning Caesar, but the very King of the universe. God is establishing the kingdom predicted by the prophets, offering the ...
Even to the Jews who took the prophets seriously, it needed to be shown that the death and resurrection of the Messiah were predicted by the prophets — and that ...