Think about it. When God looks at His people, He sees Jesus. Perfect Jesus. Righteous Jesus. Jesus, who never did a thing wrong. When we sin, God breaks Him. He gets the punishment for every wrong. Though the wrath culminated on the cross, unbound by time God punished Him for every single sin we’ve made or will make.
New Years resolutions have been failing since day one. How do we recommit our mindsets to good habits, in February and throughout this new year? It goes deeper than just the end result.
7 min read
We worked grasping as much as young children can grasp that what we did was important. It wasn’t a matter of if we felt like it or not. It was a matter of life and death…
7 min read
The world teaches us to avoid suffering — treat ourselves, love ourselves, preserve ourselves. But is exposing ourselves to pain good — is compassion worth the pain it leaves behind?
7 min read
Desires will strive to control us; expectations will tug us in either direction (both the world’s standards, our family’s, our schools, our own, etc.).
4 min read
The whole world seems to agree that freedom is found when we carefully foster the ideas of the little visionaries in us — a culture built around it’s own sort of religion for ‘revealing our true selves’. But don’t they have it backwards?
5 min read
Bible reading plans are great. Daily prayer times are good reminders. But when it comes to having a relationship with God? That is only the beginning. Spontaneity isn’t required — but constant willingness to stop what we are doing serve is.
5 min read
Sometimes the ‘baby step’ items on our lists are the hardest to face. We have big goals, sure, but the actual process can be most grueling in the simple tasks that build the end product. We make our ways to avoid the small stairs — elevators, so to speak, to cost a fraction of the time and exercise…
5 min read
The average American sees 4,000 to 10,000 ads in a day. If you read that and immediately believed it, I would be surprised…I did further research to find whether this statement is true.
6 min read
Instead of trying to convince the other side, they are trying to dismantle them, to tear them apart by explaining why their own views are right instead of respectfully appealing to the other side’s flaws. Sometimes the argument is flipped, and the predator will speak only on the other side’s flaws while avoiding their own side of the argument. Both have equally weak rhetoric. And it isn’t uncommon to see both sides take stances like this.
5 min read
God’s Word is inherently beautiful. As plain as some of the text may be, as many numbers added in and painful descriptions dispersed throughout the text, still its purpose and coherence gives it a majesty that can be neither heightened nor diminished by expensive colored pencils.
5 min read
The arch in Missouri and the winding Mississippi River certainly didn’t suggest perfection with their beauty. But each one was a work of art for the time, an image that God had been faithful to someone, somewhere, who had labored to make it so. It is hard not to think of how faithful God has been to you when you think of the world that way.
5 min read
Actions are stronger than words because words only inspire action. Waiting for the right time to say something is a worthy time to show we mean it. Words have their power. Worthy words — good, strong ones — are worth the wait.
5 min read
Lives have been saved, tears sopped up, people encouraged and clinging to each other at the point of death all because of a love that exists between friends.
Yet so easily, we dismiss friendship as a casual act of pleasure.
7 min read
The icons have captured our eyes — become a different sort of currency to settle deals of attention and passions. To exude, to convince, to plead, to delight, to sell. It’s amazing how much power can be instilled in a simple shape…
7 min read
It wasn’t the glorious beauties of creation’s high peaks and trees — anyone could point out the beauty in those. Jesus chose…
7 min read
For their historical value, rhetorical brilliance, gripping accounts, and most of all for their divinely inspired truth… the most eye-opening books of the Bible that EVERYONE should read.
13 min read