(I read this passage in prep for a discussion with my friend who is currently caught up in urgent and overwhelming circumstances.) BLUF: John 6:1-40 > beware of getting caught up/consumed by the temporal and miss the eternal, caught up in the physical and miss very real growth of the unending life in the Spirit…
(looking back as parents of grown children – of which we have 8) Isaiah 64:6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Why is…
PRAY fervently and continually. That’s it. We tend to examine/evaluate our parenting in terms of success and failure. A much better scale is obedience/disobedience. Raising our kids is a stewardship and the goal is to be found trustworthy. 1 Cor. 4:1-5 So have as your Parent Focus: Be the best I can be in living…
Prov. 3:6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. “…and He will make your paths straight.” I’ve always wondered what this meant. Recently I recognized that pride is my bent, the direction of…
Isaiah 6:3 “…the whole earth is full of His glory!” I have always thought a full manifestation of His glory was yet to come. I often pray as a companion to “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Mt. 6:10) the promise in Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth…
It’s difficult but critical to discern what I truly believe and will stand/act upon and what I feel. It seems like for so many people faith and truth are determined by feeling; ‘it can’t be true if it doesn’t feel true’. What an unreliable, easily manipulated determinant. 1 Peter 1:25 …but the word of the…
1. Come with humility – if we had true humility, that would be motivation enough to pray. Humility is recognizing who God is and who you are in relationship to Him. Who is God? Acts 17:24-25 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does…
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:24 All our present life is spent in the physical world using physical senses – sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. There is an even more real (certainly longer lasting) unseen realm. It takes faith and practice to SEE/sense what’s…
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant…
“It is as men live that they pray. It is the life that prays. All lack of power to pray aright and perseveringly; all lack of power in prayer with God points to some lack in the Christian life.” Andrew Murray How shall we then live? Think about it… Isaiah 26:3 You keep him in…