Tag: Faith

Digging in Deeper: Daniel 3:16-18

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“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.  If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.  But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

“But if not.”  These are three of the most powerful words in all of the Old Testament.  They carry the power of unshakeable faithfulness.  They herald the potency of eternal life.  These three men had perfect confidence in their Lord to save them from the destruction that sat before them in some kind of miraculous way.  But if not; but if He didn’t; but if He decided that their deaths in this moment would ring a louder note for the kingdom than their lives, they were still going to stick with Him. Read the rest…

Morning Musing: 2 Peter 1:5-8

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“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Do you want to be effective?  We all do, don’t we?  We want to be able to have an impact on the people and environment around us.  Not only that, but we want to do so in a way that will last and have meaning.  The question, then, becomes: How do we do this?  How can we have an effective impact on our situations? Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Lamentations 3:21-24

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“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Lamentations is a series of complaints to God.  Jeremiah wrote these toward the end of his ministry when Babylon had conquered and destroyed Jerusalem.  It is mostly a bitter book.  It’s tone is both corporate and personal.  Chapter three here in particular is very personal.  The prophet describes feeling totally abandoned and even actively attacked by the Lord.  They are words that ring with familiarity to those who have experienced loss and grief and seasons of great distress today. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Hebrews 11:1

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“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

As the writer of Hebrews defines it here, faith is, by definition, a conviction about the positive existence of something we have not seen.  For instance and as the writer observes in v. 3, it is by faith that we conclude the world and everything in it was created by God.  We weren’t there and so we could not possibly have seen it.  And yet we believe it all the same.  The question here we must address in light of modern misunderstandings about the nature of faith, though, is this: Is it reasonable? Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Ephesians 2:8-10

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For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship; created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.  (ESV – Read the chapter)

For anyone who would argue that our salvation has in even the tiniest of ways to do with our good works, this verse puts the lie to their position.  Any individual, church, or even whole faith tradition that says otherwise is mistaken.  That’s a pretty strong way to put it, but there really isn’t any other way around what Paul says here.  Salvation comes by grace through faith and not by works.  Period.  We didn’t have anything to do with it being given to us beyond receiving the gift by faith. Read the rest…