Knowing & Being Known

Whenever you’re feeling down, the Psalms are an excellent source of comfort and encouragement. In Psalm 42:5-11, the psalmist shares how God offers comfort to you, His child, in hard times. To receive it, you should … •  Look within. Before you can deal with despair, you need to know what is causing it. If you’re not sure, ask the Lord to help you figure out what’s going on. •  Look up. The next step is to lift your eyes to…

There was order in the Garden. Everyone had an assignment. Work was part of the creation story. Adam was to tend the garden, with Eve’s help of course. The ground wasn’t cursed so work was a joy. Imagine that! Joy at work. The word joy is not often associated with work. But with no sin in the picture - or anxiety over deadlines or HR issues constantly surfacing - life was good. Very good, in fact. Unfortunately, in our current disposition far too often we attach…

Discernment is the ability to make sound judgments by perceiving what is not readily obvious, and it is critical to our life in God. For example, what should you do when you want to follow the Lord but have multiple choices that appear promising and good? How can you know if you’re hearing from God or simply listening to your own desires? All we have to do is ask. Proverbs 2 says, “If you cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding … then…

Scripture presents Jesus of Nazareth as both fully God and fully human and says that Jesus avoided sin entirely. He never misses the goal of loving every human being in the ways of God.He teaches his followers that the most important instruction from God, the one that sums up the whole law and the prophets, is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:35-40). He’s restating the essential nature and original goal of real human life. The Apostle…

In times of pain and adversity, we might feel as if God has abandoned us. If He were here, we think, He would have done something by now. However, today’s passage says that nothing can separate us from Christ’s love: • Not events. There isn’t any circumstance—no matter how bad—that can remove us from divine love. In fact, we can “conquer through Him who love[s] us” (Romans 8:35-37), and our hardships will only help to transform…

The heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised, delighted. For years she had been hoping he would pursue her. When they had been seated, he pulled out his Day Timer and began to review the goals he had set for her that year. "I wanted to burst into tears and run out of the restaurant,;…

It’s been a rough few weeks for Colleen and me. Between extended travel, fatigue, illness, a new puppy to care for, a car that broke down and needs thousands of dollars of repair (first world problem), and the most taxing of all – spiritual warfare. When we committed to placing the security of a paycheck in the rear-view mirror, we knew it would be no panacea. We also knew the enemy would hassle us at every turn. Making the decision to finish strong and be all…

Think about a time when you were highly distracted—it’s unlikely you were able to hear God at all. Sometimes, when that happens, the Lord chooses to speak through unusual circumstances. Consider Moses in the third chapter of Exodus. Though well-educated and raised by royalty, he was exiled to the wilderness. He was no doubt surprised by such a turn of events and preoccupied by fear, disappointment, and pride. But God had big plans for Moses. So He arranged…

Having the “image” or “likeness” of God means, in the simplest terms, that we were made to resemble God. Adam did not resemble God in the sense of God’s having flesh and blood. Scripture says that “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and therefore exists without a body. However, Adam’s body did mirror the life of God insofar as it was created in perfect health and was not subject to death.The image of God (Latin, imago dei) refers to…