The world stands under the judgment of God for its rebellion. Unrepentant, the world is doomed to destruction. When Christ returns, that doom will fall. The only ones who will not be touched by the devastation will be those who are delivered.
Grace looks forward. Yes, the way seems long and the obstacles seem fearful, but God will not begin a work in us and not finish it. Our salvation is nearer than when we first believed, and by His grace, we can make it the rest of the way.
When the things you cherish are taken away from you, you will grow in wisdom. You’ll learn more from losing things than you ever learned by gaining them. And what you’ll learn is that God is all you have to have, the one thing you can’t do without.
With too much tranquility, we tend to forget God. We need to get out of our ruts and go on some fearful adventures, the kind that require real faith. If we don’t, God may have to disturb us. He may have to say, “Get out of your country . . .”
What God has done is powerful, but neither nature nor the Scriptures are powerful enough to impress us if we are unobservant. For the significance of what we see and hear to sink in and alter our character and conduct, we have to pay attention.
If God’s love for us is active, then our response to Him must also be active. He will help us do whatever needs to be done (Philippians 4:13), but He won’t force salvation upon any person who doesn’t care enough to seek Him diligently.
Most of our deeds have to be done without any foreknowledge of their outcome. Hope doesn’t mean confidence that things will work out as we wish, but confidence that God’s purposes will be accomplished, even if we have no idea what is going to happen.
We are a busy people with little time to meditate on God. But do we have so little longing for God because we’re busy, or are we so busy because we have little longing for God? Once we answer that with integrity, things will start looking up.
When we’re counting our blessings we need to count those times when we’re forced to face our need for God. Any episode of “hunger” that disrupts our sense of self-sufficiency and brings us back to the reality of our need is to be appreciated.
Thinking rightly about the God who is our Creator is vital. Remembering — rather than forgetting — what God has done in the past is the key to dealing reverently with God in the present and to thinking clearly about His promises in the future.
After having refused His rule, the saved are those who have returned to their rightful King, sought His forgiveness, and sworn allegiance to Him from now on. Christ is truly ...
If we view God wrongly, we’re going to have wrong beliefs about the reality of sin and the question of our fellowship with God. The gospel will mean little if ...
Jesus makes possible our reconciliation with God because he “gave himself as a ransom for all.” In other words, He paid the price for us to be released from our ...
In Christ, we begin to know God, and we have what might be considered a foretaste of eternal life — or a down payment on it (Ephesians 1:14) — but ...
We may “know” that Jesus died for us, but in too many cases, the significance of what we know hasn’t really sunk in. The devil is perfectly content for us ...
If the gospel of Christ is true, we’re not in good spiritual health if we’re not in a right relationship with the God who is our Creator — and that ...
Sin is the rebellion of our will against God’s will. The gospel of Christ proposes to transform us back into people who submit to the will of their Creator. So ...
We have to stretch our minds to accept that there could be books written in human language that ultimately came from God’s own spirit (2 Peter 1:21), but that is ...
What have we done with what we’ve heard, however much or little that may be? The real question is not whether we’ve heard, but whether we’ve listened. We’ve “heard” enough ...
The heavens declare the glory of God. Every part of the world is full of wonder, obviously, but isn’t there something special about the sky? We need to admire it ...
Paul argued that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” are clearly seen “in the things that have been made.” Many have agreed, including Joseph Addison, who was no fool when ...
As the head, Christ is deeply concerned about the body’s healthy functioning. He died to make the church possible, and having done that, there is nothing He wouldn’t do to ...