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Two Responses: Our Choice
When you’re faced with a decision, what guides your response? Do you act based on emotion in the moment, or do you pause, pray, and thoughtfully consider your options? And when you sin—what’s your first reaction? Do you blame, ignore, make excuses, or repent? In 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, we read about two kings, David and his son Solomon, each with different responses to sin. After his impulsive and grievous sins of adultery and murder in 2 Samuel, David was confronted by the prophet Nathan. Instead of hiding or excusing his actions, he humbly confessed. In 2 Samuel 12:13, David said, “I have sinned against the LORD.” His repentance…
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Formed, Forgiven and Never Forgotten
I recently re-read what may be for some a somewhat obscure passage in the Old Testament. It was for me, but I saw something that warmed my heart as I saw the connection between the Old and New Testament, between Israel and us. Isaiah was prophesying what God told him to say to Israel. He would deliver this rebellious nation from their enemies. He’d made a covenant with Abraham and He would not break it, no matter what they did. The section that stood out to me in Isaiah 44, that I found so comforting, for Israel, and for myself, was in verses 21-23: This reminds them God created them.…
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We Never Stop Learning
Whoever said we can put down our “books” and cease learning and growing at a certain age is just plain wrong!! We do not get to say, now that I’m (you fill in the blank) years old, I know it all and I can say and do anything I want…like we have it all figured out. The enemy of our lives wants us to believe that. The Lord knows it’s false and continues to call us forward in our walk with Him and others as long as we breathe. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that we’ve lived longer, we’ve read more, we’ve experienced more….so what can the Bible,…
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Grieving God’s Heart
Don’t you love it when you hear God speak the same message through different avenues? Perhaps it is in the course of a day, or several days or weeks. But the message recurs in various ways, all leading you to the same principle. Some days, because I study and read several things at the same time, they all seem to point in a particular direction. This happened the day before I wrote this post. I was reading Genesis 6-7 as a part of my Foundations F-260 chronological reading plan. The verse that stood out was Genesis 6:6. After creation, sin entered the world. Adam and Eve were banished from the…
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Peter’s 3’s
Numbers are important in Scripture. The numbers 3, 7, 10 and 12 indicate completeness. Most of us who have read the Gospels, remember the 3 times Peter denied Christ after His arrest, even as Jesus was defending his own identity to the authorities. And this was after Peter swore he would follow Jesus anywhere. Peter told him, “Even if everyone falls away because of you, I will never fall away.” (Matthew 26:33) And many of us also remember when Jesus restored Peter on the shore in (John 21:15-19). He asked Peter if he loved him, not once but 3 times. And each time Peter was told to “feed My sheep”.…
