ver felt the feelings of shame, disbelief, anger, frustration after a major screw up? Made a choice or a mistake that you “shouldn’t make?” I know the answer is yes, so I will go ahead and ask the follow up question: How did you respond? Did you jump right up and run back to the huddle, or did you send your helmet soaring?
This week I felt led to share with you my renewed commitment to becoming and living as a “man of God’s Word.” I do so in hopes that it will somehow motivate and inspire you to make or renew a similar commitment!
Who is God to you? This is the “must answer” question of a lifetime, because how you answer it determines everything about how you relate to Him!
Is it possible that, like the church in Ephesus, we have lost our first love in our pursuit of good deeds, hard work, and excellence in ministry? I invite you to journey with me as we rediscover the knowledge of God and grow in love for Him and those around us!
What is the grace of God about? In Luke 15, Jesus shares the story of the prodigal son, in which we learn a great deal about the heart of our Father and the nature of His mercy and grace toward His children. And there is much more to this grace than you might think!
Unfortunately, mercy is one of those words that most Christ followers have heard so often that it has become a bit tired & cliché. But when we understand the full reality of God’s mercy and our desperate need for it, our hearts cannot help but grow in love for Jesus. Here we examine the “parable of the prodigal son” and discover life-altering lessons about God’s merciful heart!
I am not at all interested in trying to convince you of the “necessity” of taking either position [on vaccines]. My guess is that you have already had plenty of conversations along those lines. This is especially true if you have spent five minutes on social media. Instead, as someone who is a follower of Jesus and has spent hours trying to gauge His perspective on the matter, I would like to share with you a few things I think Jesus might say to us if He were physically present.
Jesus tells us in John 13:34-35 that loving people is the way that the world will know that we are His disciples, that we genuinely love Him and long to be like Him. And in the book of I John (among other places), we are told that we do not truly love God if we do not also love those around us. This is why Jesus says that the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves, is “like” the first. They are very closely related.
In Matthew 22:39, Jesus tells us that the second greatest commandment is that we love other people “as we love ourselves.” For many followers of Jesus, our issue is typically not that we DON’T love others as we love ourselves, but that we DO. We just don’t love ourselves very well. Worse yet, in many cases we have become OK with our lack of self-love and have even convinced ourselves that it is biblical. The truth is, God has created each of us with value and purpose, and His desire is that we would learn to love ourselves in a biblical way!
Since growing in love for God is our priority, why do so many believers seem to struggle in that regard? Why do so many begin to doubt that their love for Jesus is real, becoming content to just “go through the motions” or even turning their backs on God completely? Stop wearing yourself out trying to manufacture that which you are incapable of producing. You will never impress God, so quit trying! But you can move His heart greatly by simply responding to what He desires to pour into yours – His boundless and unconditional love!