Digging in Deeper: Joel 2:13

“Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God. For he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you are a parent of two or more, you’ve been through this experience before I imagine: One of your kids does something ugly to another of your kids. What do you do? You make them apologize for what they did. And what do they do? If your kids are like mine, they look disgusted at this instruction, and quickly mumble a meager, “Sorry,” whose inflection makes clear they’re not really sorry at all. And that’s okay, because the exercise of apologizing when you’ve done something wrong is what’s really important in that moment. But relationally speaking, that kind of apology doesn’t accomplish very much. It doesn’t with God either.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: 1 Samuel 27:1

“Then David said in his heart, ‘Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.’”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had a moment or even a whole season when your faith failed? I don’t mean you failed to keep faith, I mean it just like I said: Your faith failed. You had faith and things were rocking along fairly smoothly even in spite of the challenging season you were in, and then it was just gone. It was like you were driving a car down the highway, cruising down the road, and then all of a sudden it made a sharp turn off the road and headed out into the wilderness. This is what happened to David. Read the rest…