I make mistakes. I mess up. I sin and fall short of the glory of God. I make choices that disappoint God and separate me from Him. I’m not perfect! I’m about as far from perfect as it is possible to be! But, I am perfect! “What!? You just said that you are not perfect! How can you then say that you…

How big (or little) are you in YOUR OWN eyes? How do you see yourself compared to God? In First Samuel 15, the Lord told King Saul, “Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them” (15:3). “But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings,…

Every translation I checked for 2 Thessalonians 3:3 begins the verse with the word “But.” What’s the big deal about that? The chapter begins with Paul asking his brethren to “pray for us.” First and foremost, Paul wanted “the word of the Lord” to be able to “run swiftly and be glorified.” Then, he longed to “be delivered from unreasonable and wicked…

Faithful Christians are responsible for standing for truth (Eph. 6:10-14) and giving an answer to questions that are asked (1 Pet. 3:15). It is truly amazing how God supplied the answers in His Word (cf. 2 Pet. 1:3; 2 Tim. 3:16-17), even before many of the answers were ever needed. Consider this. Which of the apostles was married? Was James? John? Matthew?…

Surely there’s nothing wrong with it, right? A customer in a restaurant with self-service fountain drinks asks the cashier for a water cup. A small (maybe 9 oz.), translucent cup is handed to the “customer,” so that he can dispense some drinking water into his free water cup. The customer then makes his way to the dispenser and proceeds to make another…

American screenwriter, director and film producer, Joss Whedon (known for “Avengers” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”), once said, “Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.” For too many people, they would agree with that conclusion. But, let’s make a distinction. Do you think there were any Bible characters who experienced loneliness? Joseph? David? Jeremiah? Paul? Most certainly there were times when…

While most Christians know “The Golden Rule,” there are many of us who have a hard time living it consistently. Meditate on this paraphrase (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), and ask yourself, “Is this my standard operating procedure?” What if God had said, “Think about others as you would have them think about you”? Do I…

The wise man Solomon warned about “difficult days” (NKJV), “evil days” (NASB) and “days of trouble” (NIV) in the closing verses of Ecclesiastes. Life has a way of flipping everything upside down, shaking everything really hard and then doing the Hulk-to-Loki smash until our world is completely spinning. The Bible doesn’t say that those days “could” come but that they are going…