James 2.1 commands, my dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, 
Christ-originated faith.
What is the public opinion of Christianity? For too many it is seen as a constraint upon societal behavior. Why is this so? (more…)
Amos 5.6 urges, seek GOD and live! You don’t want to end up with nothing to show for your life But a
pile of ashes, a house burned to the ground. For God will send just such a fire, and the firefighters will show up too late.
It is natural for men to want to live a life of significance. All of us want to leave a legacy and be remembered for doing good. But what does it mean to live a life of significance? (more…)
Hosea 4.8 observes, you can’t tell the people from the priests, the priests from the people. I’m on My
way to make them both pay and take the consequences of the bad lives they’ve lived.
One of the major doctrinal shifts that came out of the Reformation is the empowerment of all Christians to live and serve God as priests – the priesthood of all believers. This teaching throughout the New Testament and modeled by God in Jesus whose twelve disciples were not from the religious class but from the working class, was finally implemented during the Reformation after a long hiatus beginning around 300AD. (more…)
Daniel 9.15-17 laments, Master, you are our God, for you delivered your people from the land of Egypt
in a show of power—people are still talking about it! We confess that we have sinned, that we have lived bad lives….We know it’s our fault that this has happened, all because of our sins and our parents’ sins, and now we’re an embarrassment to everyone around us. We’re a blot on the neighborhood….Act out of Who You are, not out of what we are.
Daniel read God’s word so he could know God’s will, then he prayed for God’s people to be restored to God’s will as described in God’s word. Daniel understood from God’s word that God’s people were disobedient to God’s will which explained their current calamity. (more…)
1 Kings 13.33-34 describes, after this happened, Jeroboam kept right on doing evil, recruiting priests for
the forbidden shrines indiscriminately—anyone who wanted to could be a priest at one of the local shrines. This was the root sin of Jeroboam’s government. And it was this that ruined him.
Jeroboam’s root sin should be so familiar to us because it is so prevalent among us. What was his root sin, the sin we see everywhere around us and perhaps even within us? (more…)
Matthew 9.13 records, I’m after mercy, not religion. I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.
This ‘harsh’ word from God should cause us to pause and consider the importance of His message recorded for us so that we can know Him and do His will. God in Jesus is warning us, challenging us, seeking to penetrate our worldview so that we reconsider our ways and realign our priorities.
What does it mean to coddle? (more…)
Ephesians 2.1-6 describes, it wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You
let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
We have to decide what we believe about ourselves and God for what we believe about these things determines how we live, and how we live, if there really is a God, determines our eternal destiny. (more…)
2 Corinthians 13.5-9 challenges, test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along
taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won’t show that we have failed.
In every endeavor where we measure performance we test. From academia to sports to the lab we test in order to determine strength, truth or ability. In Christianity, we tend not to test. (more…)
2 Corinthians 2.9-11, reminds us, the focus of my letter wasn’t on punishing the offender but on 
getting you to take responsibility for the health of the church. So if you forgive him, I forgive him. Don’t think I’m carrying around a list of personal grudges. The fact is that I’m joining in with your forgiveness, as Christ is with us, guiding us. After all, we don’t want to unwittingly give Satan an opening for yet more mischief—we’re not oblivious to his sly ways!
The health of the church is the responsibility of each of the members. The key to church health is each member seeing themselves as having an ownership interest. How does a church remain, become and develop it’s health? By living according to God’s Word. (more…)
Luke 22.31-32 observes, Satan has tried his best to separate all of you from Me, like chaff from wheat.
Simon, I’ve prayed for you in particular that you not give in or give out. When you have come through the time of testing, turn to your companions and give them a fresh start.
The goal of Satan is to separate us from Jesus. Not too complicated really. Why is this important? Jesus is life, Jesus is truth, Jesus is hope, Jesus is peace with God, Jesus is our Guarantor of life everlasting. (more…)
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