I am reminded of a story told by a pastor long ago about why God calls His people sheep. As this pastor told the story, he said that sheep are not the brightest animals on the earth. And as you think about people in general, we are not the brightest when it comes to understanding God's ways and His direction for our lives. Many people will follow and believe anything they are told or hear. We just accept it as gospel truth without any research or evidence. People will create

I have come to better understand why so many of us, as Christians, struggle with living and walking a good Christian life. We want to do good and please God because of what He has done for us. That is good and commendable, but God does not ask that of us. He wants us to receive His free gift of eternal life, and trust in the work of Jesus, and then leave the rest of the work to Him. If we keep trying to please God with doing these good things, there lies the problem. In the B

This is an interesting question that many Christians have asked over the years. Since God's grace came to all men because of sin, (sin came through the Law of God), that must mean that God has given us the freedom to continue to sin that His grace may continue to abound even more. Read what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans: Romans 5: 20-21 (NIV) The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just

As we go through trials, I am sure we sometimes wonder what God is doing in our lives. I am sure we may even question God for what He is doing, I know I do at times. But we have a great God who is "all-knowing" and "always present' in our lives. In the book of 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians with the following: 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,

In the first Book of Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is addressing many issues with the church in Corinth. One of the issues was tolerating sin with other believers and themselves. He uses the example of "leaven and unleavened bread". 1 Corinthians 5: 6-8 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been s

Reading a message in "Our Daily Bread" about the sacrifices of God's people and how they would bring blind, lame, and diseased to God as their offerings to Him (Malachi 1: 8-9), reminded me of how we sometimes do the same to God with our own lives. We give to God only a part of ourselves at times and keep hold of the areas in our lives we think we can manage on our own. God wants our whole hearts, our full obedience and sacrifice to Him. Read the following in Malachi and see

Many people who go through trials in their life grit their teeth when they see the trials coming and pray hard that God will help make the trial go away soon. The trials themselves can be very painful and hard to endure, depending on the type of trial it is. But no matter what type of trial whether it be family, personal, financial, or relational, they can be very heart-wrenching. Early in my years as a new Christian, I was unfortunate to go through very many hard trials in m

In the Book of Acts, we are reminded of Jesus' ascension into heaven and the promise He gave to His apostles, that He would send the Holy Spirit upon His leaving. As I read the passage, I was overwhelmed and amazed of the power that came upon the Apostles when the Holy Spirit came upon them. Read the following in the Book of Acts: Acts 2: 1-4 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from he

In "Our Daily Bread", entitled, "False Confidence", the subject speaks about our false confidence that we can build up in ourselves based on different disciplines we have come to learn to practice in our life. These types of learned practices can lead us to becoming over-confident in ourselves, which in turn can lead us into judging others on how we are becoming. The writer uses an example of a person who received a stern talk from their physician regarding their health and

What is faith? If we were to ask a handful of people, I am sure we would produce many different answers. But the walk in the life of a Christian is much different than the world's point of view. Our faith as Christians, is not a blind faith, it is faith in God, the God of this universe. In the Book of Hebrews in chapter 11 verse 3, says the following: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visib

In the Book of Matthew in Chapter 22, Jesus shares a few parables to the spiritual leaders of His time. They were constantly trying to trap Him in His teaching to the people. The one parable that stood out this morning was the "Parable of the Wedding Banquet". In this parable, many guests are invited to the wedding banquet. First, to God's chosen people, the Jewish community, but they refuse and were too busy with their farm and others with their business (Matthew 22: 1-7). T

In today's world we are constantly being bombarded with commercials about growing up and being the man, or women we want to be, or become. We need to grow up and be mature in our thinking and stand up for our rights. But from God's eyes, He says the complete opposite from the way we should become if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Read the following in the Book of Mark: Mark 10: 13-16 13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them

The chapter, "The Fruit of the Spirit is Love", in Andrew Murray's book, Absolute Surrender, I am humbled to realize how much I have failed in this area of my life. Andrew Murray states that from our daily life and conduct that the "Fruit of the Spirit is Love". From there comes all the graces and virtues in which "love" is manifested: joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; no sharpness or hardness in our tone, no unkindness or selfishness; meekness before God and m

Psalm One is a great psalm that highlights what the life of a Christian should be like: We are blessed if we do not walk in step with the wicked...We are blessed if we do not stand in the way that sinners take...and we are blessed if we do not sit in the company of mockers. But the psalmist goes on to say that if we delight in the law of the Lord, and if we meditate on His law day and night, we will be "Like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in seaso

There is so much wrong in our world today. Everywhere we turn to, we see so much anger, fighting in the streets, and sometimes killings. Our current generation compared to our generations of the past, has become a generation so full of "self and hate". Our "self-will" has over-taken today's society even in our Christian circles. My daughter who worked at serving people at a restaurant came home and told me of a woman she knows that goes to our church that was very rude and se

"One of the worst things sin did for man was to make him selfish, for selfishness cannot love", as stated by Andrew Murray, in his book, Absolute Surrender. It is because of one man's sin, Adam, that every person born after him, was born into "selfishness". Selfishness has continually ruled our world and man has never been satisfied with what he receives. We always seem to want more and more. But just as one man's sin entered this world, one Man's sacrifice, (Jesus Christ), c

Jesus once told a Pharisee, who had invited Him to his home for dinner, said the following: "But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” (Luke 7: 47b) We, as new-born-Christians, come to Jesus because we have come to recognize that we are sinful people and of need of a Savior. So, we give our hearts to Jesus and ask Him to come into our hearts and change us from who we have become. Many of us have led a life of great sin and others have had a life not so bad, but knew

In the Book of Jeremiah, the Lord directs Jeremiah to tell the people of Judah how they have turned their backs on Him and how much He has shown His love for them, despite their consistent rebelliousness. Jeremiah 2: 13 (NKJV) For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water. After all that God had done for the people of Israel...leading them out of captivity from

The second chapter of the book, "Absolute Surrender" by Andrew Murray, is entitled, "The Fruit of The Spirit Is Love". This chapter can open our eyes to realize how much we are missing, as Christians, by not utilizing the full power of the Holy Spirit to live through us. As stated by Andrew Murray from "Absolute Surrender": "Under the Old Testament you know the Holy Spirit often came upon men as a divine Spirit of revelation to reveal the mysteries of God, or for power to do

Many of us as Christians, struggle with God's grace and forgiveness in our lives. We tend to think that we have gone too far with God's grace. We will say something like; "God, I know you can't forgive me for this sin again, I keep doing the same thing over and over again", or we think we have messed up so bad in our life, that God can never forgive us for all the things we have done and are doing. The great news is that God's grace and forgiveness never ends...If we have a r