In any contest between the head and the heart, the heart will almost always win. Our loves are powerful things; they direct our actions almost irresistibly. So we must constantly work on our desires and diminish the loves that lead us away from God.
We need to see sin for what it is: a worshiping of the wrong god. Not many of us would want to be known as idolaters, but that’s what it comes down to when, at the devil’s urging, we exchange God, our hearts’ true desire, for anything else at all.
When we talk of “hard times,” we should be careful. For all the hardship we face from a shortage of life’s necessities, we face an even greater challenge when we suffer a surplus. If we’re not careful, our character will weaken in times of affluence.
Do we really want our hearts to be adjusted to God’s holiness or not? If we do, there is a price to be paid and a discipline to be submitted to. We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom. There is no other entrance, no easier entrance.
It’s a foolish waste of time to always be looking for shortcuts. Today is how we get to tomorrow! And if today is difficult, as it often will be in this world, we ought to do more than tolerate it. We ought to taste it deeply and give thanks for it.
Our actions spring from our thinking — and if our thinking were to be filled with the adoration of God, just imagine what the result would be! Our deeds would be drawn toward Him with a force that all the evil armies of hell could not stop.
Whatever God expects us to do, He will help us to do. And help with those things is what we ought to desire, more than we desire His help with lesser concerns. In anything related to the gospel of Christ, we needn’t worry about coming up short.
The light we should ask for is light to illuminate the road we’re actually going to travel. Guidance is only for those who are going somewhere. So if we’re reaching forward, we should pray for light — but our intention must be to move forward!
By our nature, we are creatures who seek, and every kind of seeking that we may engage in has its own set of consequences. Depending on what we seek and how we seek it, we will each arrive at a “goal” that is the ultimate outcome of our seeking.
Life in this world is hard. It is ugly, and it is dangerous. We’re never more than a step away from sorrow or shame, and the weight of the world may not be something we can bear without breaking — but being broken need not be the end of the story.
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 ...