(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…
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…
BLUF: (bottom line up front – synopsis) Six Principles to Apply by Wisdom The scriptures teach us the path that as we follow it leads to abundant life! Ps. 32:8; 16:11; John 10:10 Biblical relationships are counter-cultural; we must live differently than most. Rom. 12:2; Jas. 4:4; 2 Cor. 6:17; Prov. 16:25 (the way that…
Jesus is about to ‘be lifted up’ (for all to see – shame, the greatest unfairness/injustice, as though powerless – He who had ALL authority and power) for the sins of the whole world…and He knows it. He says, “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’”…
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…
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…
How many of you are like me? You pray for yourself and other people and things and when you don’t see anything happen you get discouraged and want to give up? Purpose for prayer is not so much to get things from God, but for us to know God. (A mentor I had long ago quoted…
Psalm 106:14-15 MSG They only cared about pleasing themselves in that desert, provoked God with their insistent demands. He gave them exactly what they asked for…but along with it they got an empty heart. What have you demanded and received, only to be left with an empty heart? Was it a certain relationship? Recognition? Accomplishment?…
“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…
When people suffer loss of food, shelter, property, health….material and physical needs, we tend to think of prayer as simply ‘consolation’ (last resort) because we don’t have the means to provide the ‘real help’ replacing what they lost. If we primarily or even only give physical and material/temporal aid, we simply enable them in their…