“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
There are two ideas in Jesus’ words here that are absolutely essential to understand if we are going to do life well during our time on earth. The first reminds us that how we live now matters. The second reminds us of our desperate need for grace. We’ll tackle one this morning, and one on Monday morning. Read the rest…
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Isn’t this a nice verse of deliverance? God delivers us from all of our afflictions. What great comfort this offers us when we are low. God won’t leave you on the ground when you are down. That could almost go on a bumper sticker. My take? If that’s how you are reacting to this verse, you might want to take a second look…and this time, take a minute to actually read it. Read the rest…
“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Promises like these in the Old Testament are encouraging almost beyond words. To find ourselves in the midst of a truly difficult season–especially one in which we are reaping the bitter fruits of time spent sowing unrighteousness in our lives and the lives of those around us–and to encounter these kinds of reassurances to a people who were in just that kind of a situation, gives us hope that the mess doesn’t need to be our end either. But in this hope and encouragement that God is for us, these promises were intended to accomplish something even more important. Read the rest…
In this third part of our teaching series, Stand Up: How to Fight Injustice, we finally start talking about action. We’ve spent the previous two weeks establishing a baseline from which to begin our fight. This week the fight begins…but not where we might expect it. Our battles against injustice begin best not on our feet, but on our knees. Keep reading to see how this plays out through the story of Esther.
Stand Down
One of our good friends in Virginia is a handyman who enjoys woodworking. Prior to living there and getting to know Rod, the only time I had ever done any woodworking was my junior high shop classes—classes which I thoroughly enjoyed and was pretty good at. I still have most of the things I made. Rod and his wife, Pat, had the gift of loving us and they did it well and in a number of ways. One of the ways Rod did this with me in particular was to let me come down and play in his shop and create. I only got a few projects finished before our growing family reduced the time available for woodworking to nil, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Some of my favorite projects are a spice rack/cookbook shelf that’s hanging in the dining room and a toy bulldozer that was intended to be for the boys to play with until I realized how quickly they were going to break it relative to the number of hours that went into making it at which point it became a display piece. Well, Rod liked to collect t-shirts with inspirational or funny messages on them. One of my favorites was one that was perfect for the novice woodworker. It read: Measure twice, cut once, curse, go by more wood, repeat. Read the rest…
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
At first read, this is a pretty far-out there claim for Paul to make. I mean, as far as an objective fact goes it is totally false. He was not crucified with Christ. As far as we know, he was not anywhere nearby when Jesus was crucified. More than that, given where he was theologically then, he would have been part of the crowd cheering on the event. He would likely have been glad to have been able to drive the nails into His hands and feet himself. So what does he mean? Read the rest…
The Nexus 