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 His instructions, it’s vain for us to think that He will save us anyway.
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 save us. And the rest of our lives would not be time enough to praise Him sufficiently.
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 also our Brother and Friend. We worship and adore Him knowing that He knows what it is like to be “us.”
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 a harmonious way is what allowed Him to have the influence that He did.
Christ is even more fair than the creation which He has made. And the grandest truth of all is that the One who created all this beauty is able to fix our broken hearts and create a beauty within us — one that is nothing less than His own beauty.
It is regrettable that so many seem to view salvation as nothing more than being saved from their past sins. In reality, however, it is also being saved from the person we used to be. Outgrowing that old person is a process — and it takes time.
An apostasy from the faith was predicted. It was a matter of great concern to the apostles. The fact that there would occur a departure from the foundational teachings of the gospel was not something they could think about except with a broken heart.
Both individually and congregationally, restoration requires constant vigilance. We must reassess and return. Reassess and return. If our forebears did this, we are blessed to have their example. But like them, we need to REASSESS AND RETURN.
Local assemblies of Christians must commit themselves to a restoration of the apostolic order. If not, they will descend into greater “entropy” with each passing year — and there is no congregation where this tendency is not present.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us.” Return must be the church’s watchword, now as it was back then. Return to Christ Jesus. Return to the apostolic traditions. Return to the Scriptures.
It is not just our behavior that needs improving. We ourselves (our deepest thoughts and motives) need fixing. So Christ came to bring us an entirely new kind of life. ...
Having demanded to do as we please, we’ve sold ourselves into slavery. And as painful as it is, there is no better day than when we cry out, with Paul, ...
God’s plan is an amazing plan. In Christ, we can make better DECISIONS because our FEELINGS are more appropriate, and we can do that because our THOUGHTS are more truthful. ...
Sin has broken apart everything that was meant to be together, but through Christ all is being brought back into harmony. Our disintegration — our broken-to-pieces-hood — is being healed. ...
If Jesus truly was the Son of God, we would not expect that truth to be obvious to us if our “eyes” can only see things that this world considers ...
In the biblical account, we are dual creatures who straddle the physical and spiritual worlds. We have a brain, but we also have a mind — a reasoning faculty that ...
While there is a need for patience, we also need to be diligent. Our transformation will not take place automatically, by divine decree. We have to embrace the process actively ...
If faith without works is insufficient (James 2:14-26), so is baptism without conversion. If we do not make the decision to walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4), it is ...
All the good things in life require committing ourselves to them. Hesitancy, doubt, and tentativeness will cut the very heart out of our discipleship to Christ. Distrusting God, we will ...
However “nice” my outward life may be, when I measure my heart (my thoughts, attitudes, and intentions) against Jesus’ teaching, I am ashamed. His teaching disturbs me greatly, if I ...
If the congregation we’ve been a part of is not faithful to Christ, we need to worship elsewhere. But even if we’re surrounded by others who are faithful to Christ, ...
We want the “way of God” (Acts 18:26). The path that leads to God — the one He has laid out — will often seem narrow and illogical to us ...