Today Is The Day For Change

The change didn’t stop. As everyone received this new fire for Jesus, they began reaching out to people they haven’t spoke to in a long time. Some even reached out to people they didn’t know. Lives were being touched in the process. I don’t think my son knew that his decision that day to let Jesus become his Lord and Savior would make that big of impact on the people around him. I didn’t know either.

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The Difference Between Praise and Worship

Worship, if I had to come up with a basic definition, is properly acknowledging who God is. For starters, I just want to focus on his holiness. God’s holiness is the one thing that separates us from him. God is loving, but even a lost person can be a little bit loving sometimes.

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Textual Criticism and Exegesis of the Gospel of Matthew

“ELIAKIM”
There are 2 Eliakim’s; one is a son of Hilkiah (Cp. II Kings 18: 18) and the other Eliakim is the king of Judah, whose name was changed to “Jehoiakim” by Necho king of Egypt (Cp. II Chronicles 36: 4).

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Homily, Let us Speak of Holiness this morning: Bernard of Clairvaux

A Cistercian Monk, Bernard, is considered in this manner by our readings today, reflecting the three-fold manner of his character and relationship with God and man. He died at Clairvaux, 21 August, 1153:

Bernard is wise, with the wisdom of God.

Bernard is Holy, with a Holiness of God.

Bernard is friend of God, as the New Testament tells us of friendship with God.

This is the way to abide in God.

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You’re With Me Lord – Psalm 139, Part 2

Have you ever felt as if God has abandoned you, that when you reach out to Him, He’s just not there? I have. There are times when the darkness is so dark and the storm is so violent that you feel you’ll never make it out, you feel like you won’t survive. You even wonder, where is God in the midst of it all? But we can’t rely on or trust our feelings. They are fluid, constantly changing, and influenced by our own limited and faulty perceptions. Feelings waver, truth does not!

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The Value of Studying Bible Prophecy

Amazingly, throughout that year, several gullible Christians depleted thousands of their hard earned cash on these survival kits that they would never need. Sadly, these preachers are not in prison for racketeering, rather they persist in preaching on the same stations toward the same naive audiences.

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I Need to Trust Myself Trusting in God

Help me to live out what you mean when you say that you desire mercy and not perfect sacrifices. Help me to place my hope in you by hoping in the rightness and goodness of whatever you direct me to do.

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Lord, Help Me

Father, have mercy on me. Please hear my prayer. I am weak from battling the sins that come at me and the thoughts of my own mind. My body aches to be freed from the troubles that this world brings.

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Loneliness

By Stanley Hasegawa

Loneliness is about alien-ness, distance, disconnectedness, helplessness, forsakenness all shot through with a painful sense of not being valued or loved.

Loneliness can happen to us when we are aliens, strangers.

“He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him.” (John 1:10)

If Jesus our Lord was treated as a stranger by the world, we will be too.

We may experience a season of loneliness because of the loss of a loved one. This is especially true of widows and orphans because they often become simultaneously alien (they need to relate to others differently from before), disconnected, helpless (financially insecure) and in a sense forsaken.

We may experience a season of loneliness because of betrayal or abandonment.

“But this has happened so that the scriptures of the prophets would be fulfilled. Then all the disciples left him and fled.” (Matthew 26:56)

We may experience a season of loneliness because of illness or criminal punishment.

“Around three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34)

We may experience loneliness because abuse and/or neglect have profoundly altered how we think of ourselves and the people around us. As children, it is too threatening for us to acknowledge that our parents truly reject us and abuse/neglect us. If this is true, our normal, everyday life becomes impossible to live into.

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Forsake Me Not, O Lord

Forsake me not, O Lord

Lest I fall by the wayside

Wander away from your Word

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Gentle Whisper

Most day trekkers don’t come here, just the more adventurous hikers. I don’t consider myself a real hiker by any means but there is just a real hunger to want to go higher. This seems to echo a calling within my heart. In the quietness of the windy breeze blowing on these upper hills I listen for a whisper. I can’t make out the words yet but I know it’s calling me closer.

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Trust in God

by Cindy Biggar
Proverbs 3:5 tells us “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding.” This is probably one of the most difficult instructions to follow. Just why is it so hard for us to totally trust God and stop trying to figure out things for ourselves? We always [...]

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Miracle Makes No Belief

Undoubtedly, Miracles are great, spectacular, mind-bowing, supernatural, convicting and convincing. But they are not a daily occurrence and we should not expect them daily.

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THE OTHER SIDE OF FAITH

These are questions that gnaw at those who are in suffering, and those who watch others suffer, praying helplessly as it were for the suffering to be alleviated, and quickly moving from pity to condemning or judging the sufferer if it isn’t.

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How did we get our Bible?

Every year around Easter, prominently displayed, nationally known magazines parade before an unsuspecting public, articles about ancient books which these magazines allege should, could or would have become books in the Bible.

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