Even If We Don’t Understand Why God Tells Us to Do Something We Should Do It Anyway After giving Jeremiah a stinging message to tell the people, God gives a personal message to his prophet. He says, “You are not to pray for these people.” He says don’t plead for them or make a petition […]
We Must Distinguish Between Prescriptive Text and Descriptive Text The Bible contains a lot of versus that tell us what to do and what not to do. These verses stand as commands from God. Bible scholars call these prescriptive texts, as they prescribe the behavior God expects from us. However, many more verses in the […]
God Promises Rewards for Obedience and Punishment for Disobedience As we read through the book of Leviticus, which is a struggle for most of us, we read instruction after instruction of what God expects from his people. With precise detail, his commands come forth one after another. Then, in chapter 26, the book begins to […]
Sometimes We Need to Go Away for Jesus and Other Times We Need to Go Home Before Jesus returns to heaven, he tells his followers to go throughout the world and let others know about him (Matthew 28:19). Does that mean we’re all supposed to travel to a distant country for Jesus? Is that their […]
God Gives Us Holy Spirit Inspiration to Guide Us for Our Benefit and His Glory For the last week, I had planned to write the introduction to my next book. I had the whole thing outlined, and I knew what I wanted to cover in the opening pages. Each day I asked God to give […]
Ten Things to Do Wholeheartedly for God In our post Go All in For Jesus, we talked about the importance of giving God our whole heart, all our heart. The Bible repeatedly tells us to do things with “all your heart.” This means to not do things halfheartedly, that is with a split allegiance or […]
We Would Never Burn Scripture, but Ignoring a Passage Is As Bad God tells his prophet Jeremiah what to say. Jeremiah dictates it to his scribe, Baruch, who records it in a scroll. The scroll eventually makes it to the king. Though the people who hear Jeremiah’s words take his warning seriously, the king does […]
When God Tells Us to Do Something He Has a Reason and We Should Obey After Joshua leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land and takes control of it, he divides the territory among the tribes. Though they have conquered enough of the area to occupy it, remnants of other people, such as […]
The Righteous Walk in God’s Ways, While the Rebellious Trip Over His Words As the prophecy of Hosea winds down he urges Israel (and us) to turn from our shortcomings and return to God. When we do this, blessing will follow: blessings for us and for others through us. Once again, we have this concept […]
God Instructs Jacob to Go to Egypt, but He Doesn’t Intend for Him to Stay Just like Cain and Abel, along with Ishmael and Isaac, Joseph and his brothers have problems, too. There are two reasons why Joseph’s brothers don’t like him. First, he’s Dad’s favorite. Second, he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth […]