Inspirations

                                   As I was driving home today, I passed a person walking on the side of the    road.  Since it was cold, and snowy, I thought I should stop and offer the person a ride.  As I drove on by, I was irritated with myself for not stopping.  I could have and should have but I didn't. Why?  I was scared! Maybe that wouldn't bother you, but I'm willing to bet there are things that make you afraid.  It may be snakes or spiders that send the ticker into  overdrive.  Or maybe it's your job and finances that keep you up at night when you should be resting.  Then again perhaps it's relationships that consume your thoughts and energy.  As followers of God, we know that we are told not to be afraid.  Yet we often are afraid despite everything we know.   As I was driving away from a misse...

  It seems that in our society today, there is such a push to redefine laws.    Murder is wrong, but abortion is okay. It seems as though people, in general, want to make the laws say what they would like it to say. It can be very frustrating.  In all of the ado about defining laws and making other things okay that are not okay, I am happy to report that there are still ten laws that God wrote. They can not be changed or rewritten. God gave us ten moral laws that can never be changed.   They are from old and yet we all have problems just following those ten laws. We can try to adjust them or make his laws say what we want, but we can't. No matter how we try to change them, they are as solid as the physical laws like gravity.   Physical laws cannot be easily altered without consequences.   If I decide that I do not want to obey gravity and jump from a ten-story building, Gravity will show up and remind me that it is still the law unless a...

                                                                                         You must  destroy   all   the   people s  the   Lord  your God gives over to you.  Deut.  7:16 As I read this I have often wondered why God would require this seemingly harsh treatment of people. Did he hate them? No, he doesn't hate anyone. I know he didn't want his people to learn the ways of the "world", but why everyone? Some of them may have done nothing wrong. Did they deserve to die? No, probably not, but they were sucked into the drama of those around them. They aren't the only ones to have that happen to them. Simon the Cyrene had that happen when Jesus was being crucified. He was forced to carry the cross.  He's not the...

I am thankful that God offers forgiveness.  When my sins loom in front of me, and I'm faced with a mountain of guilt I can take it to God. He is the only one who can cancel our sentence. Because of that, I can  offer others that same forgiveness  when they hurt me. I am thankful that there is nothing I can do that God will not forgive when I ask. There is no pit so deep that God's hand is not deeper still, to lift us out of the hole of sin and hold us close to his heart.

The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” …    Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm.   Jonah 1:11, 15. This narrative of Jonah is compelling.  There are many parallels to the life of Christ.  But that is not what I was thinking about as I was reminded of this narrative today.  Jonah sinned and ran from the task God gave him to do.    He was instructed by God to go to Nineveh but, instead,  he headed in the opposite direction.    To get Jonah’s attention, God creates a storm, and it is a doozy.  It got everyone’s attention except Jonah’s.   He was sleeping.    Jonah’s disobedience stole everyone’s peace.  We all know people who are being disobedient to God.  Often their rebellion takes our joy.  We’ve all been there, at one...

Recently I heard a Christian friend say,  “I don’t worry about sinning, because when I sin,  I can ask God for forgiveness, and it will be alright.”     This is another one of those statements that make me cringe when I hear it.    Really?    It sounds like you are saying I can do whatever I want because God will forgive me.     This, my friends,  is not Biblical!    It cannot be found in either the Old or New Testament.    In the old testament, the children of Israel were sent into slavery for their sins.    David confessed his sin with Bathsheba,  yet he was punished.    “But that is the Old Testament and we’re not bound by that,” you say.    However, even in the New Testament, this teaching is not there.    Jesus never taught this either.     To the woman caught in adultery, he ...

As I was finishing digging the raspberry bushes out of my yard and lamenting over my laziness in letting them take over my yard, I was still thinking about how similar to sin those raspberry bushes were.  However, my thoughts were now moving in a different direction.  I have heard people say, “Well, everyone has a sin that so easily entangles them.  This is mine.”  I have to confess it makes me sad and as I was digging and cutting down the raspberries, I realized why it makes me sad.  I had the power over the bushes.  I didn’t have to let them stay in the yard, I chose to let them stay in the yard. Then I started getting excited because I realized that I have the same power over sin that I had over the bushes.  Sin is already defeated!!  We no longer have to let it say in our life.  Praise God! We can say no to sin and yes to “God-likeness."  In fact, we are commanded to “throw off the sin that so easily entangles."  There is ...

Some time ago, we had to replace the roof on our house.  It started out as a minor leak when the rain was heavy.  Gradually, it would leak every time it rained.  By the time we got it fixed, we had to replace not just shingles, but the boards underneath, and the ceiling too.  What a disaster!  It would have been relatively easy to fix when it was a small leak; but because of finances, we had none, and the massiveness of the task we let it go; because, for a while, we could put it out of our mind until the next rain storm.  Then it would rain, and we would say, “We need to do something about that roof”.   Sometimes we do the same thing in our life also.  We give the devil a foothold because we fail to take care of small things.  Rather than correct the wrong attitude, or thoughts.  We let them go because it’s a little insignificant thing and we can “fix it later”, and it easier to let it go than it is to deal with the problem....

I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin. Pslam 38: 18 So far this week I have had one squirrel and two moles invade my home thanks to our cats who think our residence should be a wildlife sanctuary for rodents.  I, on the other hand, am not convinced that these creatures should invade my domicile.  The only wildlife I want to see in my house is my family and the cats.  That is about as wild as my house is going to get.  Truth is, I hate the thought of those rodents sharing my house.  They will leave my house one way or another.  As I was chasing those critters out of my house, I started thinking about how much I hate those little “things”.  I hate them so much I will not tolerate them in my house under any circumstances.   It reminded me of how God feels about sin.  He can’t stand it.  He hates it! He wants nothing to with sin that why he sent his son Jesus.  I am forced to look at the way I treat sin i...