If your spouse is sick, you are still married. If your spouse is sick with Alzheimer’s, God has mercy for you, but not adultery. The compassion of Jesus is real. Oddly, the people Jesus lacked compassion for were religious Jewish leaders. Jesus’ rebuke of religious leaders seemingly gives weak minded people permission to accuse their bible loving brethren of judgment. Yet those accusing others of holding too tightly to doctrine are in fact doing the same thing. At it’s root, Jesus rebuked religious leaders for their lack of compassion on those who were suffering, and for their unwillingness to confess…
My son gave me a book to challenge me in my walk with Christ. I gave him a long look, not sure what he meant, but it was a compliment and the challenge was taken. Eugene Peterson’s book Run With The Horses was his chosen tool, and it worked overtime on my soul. In a twist I did not expect, he wanted to read the book along with me, so the journey was not undertaken alone. Here is a key verse God soaked in my heart. The translation is from The Message. So, Jeremiah, if you’re worn out in this…
Jesus is Christmas, and Christmas is a miracle. Ever since Mary wrapped Jesus in swaddling cloths, the human race has experienced countless Christmas miracles. Some are dramatic, like the boys who stopped World War I in order to bring Christmas cheer to their enemy. From some dark and miserable trench came a Christmas Carol, and then another, and still more, until almost 100,000 men stopped fighting in order to love on their fellow man, even if he spoke another language or fought for the other side. Hilter, then a young man at the battle front, hated it, a prophetic omen…
Racism is back in the news, nothing new, but sad and tiresome, especially when certain hell bound heretics attempt to justify their evil through distorted bible references. To read the bible is to grow in love, truth, and justice, to say nothing of mercy and compassion. Those who claim it is their right to enslave another man possess an ideology spoken from the mouth of Satan, “for it was for freedom that Christ set us free (Galatians 5:1).” The racist cannot handle the truth, namely that Adam, the first parent of the human race, was if not outright, some form…
Roman Biography Important? The attacks against the Bible are endless, sometimes nasty, often ignorant. Let’s take for a moment what the gospels are, in terms of literature. The gospels are biography, written in Roman style. How did Rome write biographies? Different than how we do it. Take for example a biography of any great U.S. President– -Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, to name a few. But let’s start with Obama, the first black President of the United States– -a great accomplishment by any standard. A biography on Obama’s life would start at early childhood, without a doubt his birth, and then walk…
Based on answered prayer, or the lack thereof, safe to say few know anything about prayer. To some prayer is a defined ritual or forced behavior, for others it is self help psychology, a self-conversation with self for the purpose of whatever. Prayer is intimate contact with God. To move beyond enjoying God toward participating with God is hard work, no way around it. Sometimes the hard work of prayer is lengthy, and at other times not. But the intensity needed for answered prayer is hard work, and rarely understood. Listen to this verse: Elijah was a man with a…
Job is the oldest book in the Bible. Before King David, and Moses, quite possibly closer to Adam than any of us realize, a man named Job encountered God. As a new believer, I saw a book in the bible named “Job,” and seriously wondered if the book had to do with employment. Thankfully it did not, something more significant was at play. I love to read Job in a layout without verses, that way my eyes can plow through the text unhindered. Sometimes I gather with others and read the whole text out loud in one shot– -that is…