Make God Your Number One Priority When asked which commandment was the greatest, Jesus said we’re to love God with all our heart, our soul, and our strength (Mark 12:29-31, quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5). We’re to love him more than anything else, to make him our number one priority. And when we understand God as referring […]
The Depth of Love is Revealed by How Much We are Willing to Give Up It is easy to say we love others. It is harder to show it, to prove our words through action. Despite what I may profess, I fear I may be more selfish than I care to admit. I may not […]
How We View God Impacts What We Allow Ourselves to Receive from Him I never liked the idea of mindset. It seemed a little too woo woo for me. It was as though I was depending on a positive attitude or self-fulfilling prophecy instead of relying on God to provide what I needed each day, […]
Shun Division, Disunity, and Denominations in the Name of Jesus Just as church member status divides the church body into two groups, so does our doctrine. Instead of obeying Jesus’s instruction to love God and love others, we make a lengthy list of what we should do and shouldn’t do. We judge others according to […]
Today’s passage: John 13:18–38 Focus verse: “A new command I give you: Love one another.” (John 13:34) Though love is a common theme throughout Scripture, Jesus places an even greater emphasis on it. So does John. John often writes about love. Except for Psalms, John’s biography of Jesus mentions love more than any other book […]
We Should Praise God for the Many Ways He Loves Us Love is a recurring theme in Scripture (686 verses). It shows up in most every book of the Bible (60 out of 66). The word is most common in Psalms (157 verses). Psalm 136 leads the way with 26 mentions of love, all in […]
Some Psalms Ask God to Punish Our Enemies and Those Who Do Evil Many people enjoy reading the Psalms. They appreciate the poetic nature of its words. They find encouragement to persevere and inspiration to strengthen their faith. Many Psalms also lead us into our worship of God. These are some of the best. However, […]
The Tongue Is a Dangerous Tool that We Must Tame In one of his Psalms, David writes that he will be careful in what he says so that he doesn’t sin. He talks about putting a muzzle on his mouth (Psalms 39:1). He says nothing about having freedom of speech. James is clear about the […]
Examine What the Early Church Did and Apply It In part one of this post we looked at the first five practices of the early church as detailed in the Bible. They relied on Holy Spirit power, they worshiped God, they spent time in prayer, they fasted, and they lived in community. Here are the […]
Apply These Biblical Tips on How to Value Others Throughout the New Testament we see instructions of how we should treat one another. Let’s call these the “one another” directives. We are to: The last two of these one-another commands come from the mouth of Jesus. The rest of them are in the letters written […]