Posts with the tag “faith”

There have been times in my life when God hasn’t made total sense when He has either allowed something to happen or said something in His Word that I’ve found difficult to understand. Scripture tells us that we are to walk by faith and not by sight. And I think that those very times when we don’t always see, when His purposes are not plain and all of our questions are not answered presents us with...  Read More

I have discovered that many people try to win God’s favor by what they do. They believe that if they’re a good enough person, then surely the scales will go in their favor and God will judge them worthy of life in His presence. The Scriptures tell us about a person who thought that way before he had a face-to-face conversation with Jesus recorded for us in John 3. His name was Nicodemus; and as a ...  Read More

Growing up I was taught that you must work hard for everything you get in life; and while that is often true, I have come to realize that it is not always so. The Bible clearly tells us that our own good works cannot get us to heaven, but that’s a hard concept for most people to understand.As far back as chapter 11 of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, people were trying to get to heaven by the...  Read More

There have been several times in my life when I’ve stepped out in obedience to the Lord, acting on something I believed He has said to me, only to have things occur that I really wasn’t expecting. And I know I am not alone in that experience. Many of you reading or hearing this have also had your expectations challenged as you’ve stepped out to follow Jesus by faith. And if you are at all like me ...  Read More

Some of the doors God opens are surprising to me. I regularly visit men in a maximum-security prison, where I have the privilege of sharing from God’s Word during chapel meetings. Over the months we’ve developed a friendship as we’ve studied the Word of God together. During a particularly difficult season of my life, following the death of my husband, I shared with them how easy it can be to doubt...  Read More

There are times in life when we find ourselves up against things we would far rather not face; and when that happens we may struggle to understand God’s purposes. God has really spoken to me about how to deal with times like that through a passage of Scripture in Mark 4:35-41.Jesus was on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; and as He often did when the crowds were pressing in, He had spent the day t...  Read More

There are many interactions between Jesus and ordinary people in the Scripture that I find meaningful because they not only show us who Jesus is, but they also reveal His kindness and grace to those who could never measure up to God’s standards in their own strength.One such encounter was when a certain father brought his son to Christ’s disciples asking that they set him free from the demonic spi...  Read More

When I became a follower of Christ, a very simple Scripture found in Romans 10:9-11 helped me to understand what must be done in order to be saved. It says, “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That seems so simple doesn’t it? And there is a part of us that wonders if that’s really all there is to it...  Read More

Type your new text here. Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary took Him to Jerusalem to consecrate Him to the Lord, as was the custom. There they encountered an old man by the name of Simeon in the Temple courts. As it turned out, he had been sent there to meet them, though they didn’t understand it at the time.Simeon was a righteous and devout man who knew the Scriptures that prophesi...  Read More

A friend and I were talking one day about the different pressures we were facing — deadlines on projects, family concerns, new opportunities that were presenting themselves — and she asked me how I paced myself…how I refreshed my mind and recharged my batteries for the next push. And because she’s getting to be a good friend, she didn’t laugh when I said, “I watch cooking shows.” It’s a natural th...  Read More

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Life is good. Plans are on track…it looks like we might even finally get ahead a bit. Then something we didn’t anticipate arises and we are brought up short. Stopped in our tracks.  Read More

Bartimaeus used to sit on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem — a fairly popular spot for a beggar to set up shop. Many wealthy people lived in Jericho where the weather was a bit nicer, and catching them as they left the city to head to Jerusalem was actually a pretty shrewd tactic. Heartstrings could more easily be plucked as pilgrims traveled to and from their spiritual capital city!  Read More