We need those who will provide safety. When we fall, there’ll be strong arms to catch us and keep us from doing further harm. The best will be believed about us, and when we’ve erred, safety means that loving allowance will be made for our growth.
When called upon to make distinctions and render judgments, we’re tempted to apply a more lenient list of rules to our family and friends than to our enemies. Yet to be truly just and impartial, we must apply the same set of standards to everybody.
In a sense, courage is the main quality that life requires of us. There is nothing life can do to hurt us as much as we hurt ourselves by our unwillingness to embrace life and live it fully. Lives that make a difference are lives that go forward!
The “eloquent” person is “persuasive, fluent, and graceful in discourse.” It seems to me that all three elements of this definition suggest some things we’d all do well to be interested in: persuasiveness, fluency, and gracefulness in our speech.
In the midst of life’s many uncertainties, we need friends who are steady and confidently predictable. And since our friends also need that kind of friendship, it wouldn’t be a waste of time for us to move our own predictability up a notch or two.
We should try to keep love from being anything less than romantic. The thoughtful things we do today ought to be spread out a little more evenly throughout the year. It takes work to keep the romantic fires burning, but it’s well worth it.
We talk about progress, but most of us are content to stick with what we’ve already got. But thank goodness for those with the courage to break through limits! Let’s appreciate them for the scary, unsettling sacrifices they’ve been willing to make.
Courage must be balanced by other virtues. Many of the most sinister figures in history have been courageous. So it is no great thing to act courageously if our actions are not governed by a conscience grounded in principles like justice and equity.
Some of the best work we ever do is the work of upgrading our personal standards. None of us has a perfect set of standards yet, and so we need to be working continually on their quality, aligning them with principles of time-tested value.
Will we participate in life’s drama or remain among the spectators? If we choose to be active, good things are more than likely to happen. But if we decide to remain passive and uninvolved, it’s less likely that we’ll enjoy life’s goodness.
Thomas declared that he would need to see Jesus for himself in order to believe He had been raised from the dead. But later, when Jesus appeared and Thomas was ...
The apostle John wrote to his brethren urging them to ground themselves in what they had been taught by the apostles (1 John 1:1-4; 2:24; 4:1,6). If they left this ...
The apostles were eyewitnesses of Jesus after His resurrection. And they were not just disciples of Christ; they were the definitive, authoritative emissaries of Christ. They could regulate the practice ...
God’s plan is to repair the damage of sin (its “corruption”) and transform us into people who think and act as creatures made in His image. In fact, He plans ...
Whatever sins we have done outwardly, it is from our hearts that such deeds have come. We need to be saved not just from the penalty for our sins, but ...
God has reached across the gap and reintroduced mankind to the truth about Himself. So the record in the Scriptures of this revelation is extremely profitable to us: “for teaching, ...
Christ opened the door to a life much better than what we call “life” right now. Although it is ironic that He gave us this life by dying, that is ...
If we follow Jesus, our concern must be for the eternal welfare of people’s souls. Let’s not lose our focus. By God’s grace, let’s do what Jesus told His apostles: ...
As Jeremiah said, the human heart is “deceitful above all things” (17:9). So when we find ourselves doing something for multiple reasons, do we have the honesty to ask, “Deep, ...
The Incarnation was a necessary miracle. Out of all our problems, there is only one that required God to become flesh: the problem of sin. To fix that problem God ...
When we are emphasizing the graciousness of God’s forgiveness, we may lead people to think that salvation has nothing to do with our conduct. But, in fact, it has very ...
If we don’t turn around, we’re going to spend eternity in a place where, without any hindrance from God, we’ll be completely “free to be ourselves.” And it will be ...