Category: Spiritual Growth
The Chains of Habit
The chains of habit are often too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. This old saying has been quoted and adapted by many writers and speakers over the years. No one is completely sure who should get original credit for...
Spiritual Adultery and the Grace to Be Restored
Are you sinning often but professing to love the Lord? Though the fruit of constant sin against God can indicate a lost condition, true believers can also sin in awful ways. James has a helpful word for us in James 4:4-10. On the one hand the...
Don’t Miss the Greetings and Benediction
I have never regretted slowing down and meditating on the greetings and benedictions at the end of Paul’s writings. Here is the latest I’ve been contemplating: Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially...
Careless Conduct
I didn’t pay careful attention. We changed insurance carriers, and the new company denied my diabetes medicine that had been keeping my blood sugar levels in check. I temporarily switched to some “over-the-counter” insulin to use occasionally when my blood sugar spiked. But I was careless....
Pursue Love
Two simple words forming one simple command lead the way in Paul’s introduction to 1 Corinthians 14 — the chapter best known for Paul’s instruction about spiritual gifts in the meetings of the local church. “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts . . .”...
Answer Your Own Prayer, Then Give God the Glory
King David was in trouble. For four years his own son, Absalom, had been secretly gathering a powerful following for himself among the men of Israel by turning their loyalties away from the true king and deceitfully undermining David’s authority. As the story is summarized in...
George Muller — His Method and Thoughts about Scripture Meditation
Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, either very soon after or at a later time, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I...
Now that Philippians is (Almost) Committed to Memory: Ten Ideas to Help You Memorize Larger Sections of Scripture
“The thing that you do crowds out the thing that you might have done.” That was a line I heard in a message this summer at a youth camp for multiple churches. It was said in a message about Enoch walking with God, and connected to...
Moses, Joshua, Jesus, and Rest
I’m sure you know the feeling of restlessness. There is a longing deep in our bones that desires rest. No nap can fix this lack of rest. Augustine, a prominent Christian from the third and fourth centuries, knew of this restlessness. He prayed, “You have made...
The Text of The Bible Is The Foundation of Your Faith
I once heard a woman who professed to be a Christian declare, in the context of a disagreement about what the Bible says about God and his ways, “I don’t care what the Bible says. It has nothing to do with my faith.” Her view on...
