Tag: Peace

Morning Musing: 1 Timothy 2:1-2

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“First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all those who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What do you do when you don’t have any power? Well, one approach is to try to get some power. That would seem to make sense. After all, power is a good thing. We all want to have some power. But what about when that’s not an option? What then? You could gripe and complain. You could punish those who do have power by making their exercise of it as complicated and uncomfortable as possible. Neither of those, though, seem like terribly positive options. Much to the contrary, they will likely make things vastly more difficult for us. There is another way, though. Paul outlines a third way here could make quite a difference indeed. Let’s talk about the best thing to do when you don’t have any power.

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Satisfied

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In the superlatively successful Broadway show, Hamilton, the Founding Father’s greatest weakness is that he is never satisfied with what he has. He is always reaching and stretching for something more. When pointed in the right direction, this resulted in incredible success and achievement. When pointed in the wrong direction, though, ruin for himself and others. We all have desires that we long to have satisfied. For some of these desires, though, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this world that can do the trick. As we continue in our series, All Signs Point to Jesus, this week we are looking at a sign that points us toward His ability to satisfy all of our desires. Let’s explore the Scriptures together.

Satisfied

When was the last time you felt really and truly satisfied? What was it that gave you that feeling? Maybe it was finishing a really big project and having your contributions graciously recognized by others. It could have been working with another person, teaching them to do something, and then seeing them succeed wildly. Perhaps it was just a really good meal. There are lots of things that might satisfy us in this life. The thing about getting satisfied in this life, though, is that whatever desire it is that was satisfied has a tendency to return. You ate that great meal, but then you were hungry again. In fact, you were probably hungry again by the time the next mealtime rolled around. You finished that one project, but then there was another one behind it. And if there wasn’t, you went looking for one. That one student succeeded, but then there was another student who needed help. And when those desires returned, sometimes the same things satisfied them again, but sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes you needed more. It’s almost like underneath these more common, daily desires we have there are deeper longings that cry out for satisfaction. Yet try as we might, getting these addressed often seems to be just beyond our reach. 

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Morning Musing: Romans 5:1

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“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When was the last time you were at odds with someone you loved? If you are married, when was the last time you and your spouse were not on good terms with each other? That’s a miserable feeling. Even if you’re not in the wrong, living with a relational divide is no fun at all. You long for things to be right again. The longer the divide persists, you start to find yourself looking to other places to get the emotional and relational needs that were satisfied by the relationship when it was working. You just want peace again. Here, as we begin the next major part of Paul’s exploration of the Gospel, he tells us how we can have peace with God. You don’t want to miss this.

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Signs and Wonders

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When you set about playing the long game toward a goal that is not going to be fast or easy to achieve, sometimes you go through seasons when things seem so messy that they couldn’t possibly allow you to go any further. These seasons can be incredibly discouraging. We want to just quit and go home. Thankfully, our God specializes in accomplishing His plans in seasons just like this. He’s always been committed to playing the long game, and He’s really good at it. Let’s look today at a story from Israel’s past when He did just that, and along the way gave some pointers to what His bigger and better plans always were.

Signs and Wonders

Do you remember doing the science project in elementary school where you grew a lima bean seed to a sprout in a ziploc bag with a wet paper towel in it? I think I did that one two or three times growing up. You put the seed in the bag next to the wet paper towel, leave it in some sunlight, and in a few days you can watch as the seed splits open and a little sprout begins to push its way out. Those particular seeds are chosen because they don’t take long to grow and kids aren’t typically known to be terribly patient scientists. They also get distracted easily. I think that by the time mine had grown only a few inches long, I was ready to toss it and move on to something else. 

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Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

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For the past two weeks, we have been talking about how to find peace in a world that is insane with sin. We’ve talked about the importance of reorienting our thinking on God through prayer and of engaging more intentionally and consistently with the Scriptures to give us the path we need to be following. In this last part, we are going to talk about one more essential thing that is all about putting these first two into practice. When we want to find a path through the messiness of the world around us, here’s what we should be doing.

Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

As smart as the good folks in Hollywood are when it comes to producing entertainment, they really never know when a particular film is going to be a smashing success and when it will totally flop. For instance, there was a movie last year called Babylon that featured the A-list talent of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie along with a budget of north of $100 million. It was perhaps the single biggest box office bomb of the last several years. A few years ago, though, Disney struck absolute gold with its smash hit, Frozen. A fun story combined with tremendous music made it the single most successful Disney animated film ever…right up until Frozen 2 came out, which beat it by almost $200 million. By most accounts and in spite of the box office numbers, Frozen 2 wasn’t ever quite as good as the original (sequels almost never are), but there was one song that really caught my attention. 

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