Restored in Him

I’m reading Dr. Ben Carson’s recent book entitled Created Equal. In it he shares insights into a number of issues prevalent in today’s culture around race relations. But I was fascinated by a subject he knows a little something about. As the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins he writes a few paragraphs about brain plasticity. Unlike many other organs of the body, the brain has not reached developmental maturation at birth. Babies…

Years in the Comfort Culture made us emotionally soft. If we don’t feel like doing something, we don’t do it. If we don’t feel like believing something, we don’t believe it. Folks like to call this authenticity, but it’s really just adolescence. Like a fourteen-year-old, we treat our emotions as some sort of right, the truest part of our existence. If we don’t feel love, we think we are no longer in love; if we don’t feel God, we…

Where has Jesus come through for you? Really. Take a moment and remember. And then write it down. Remembering fertilizes our hope. It makes our faith burgeon and bloom. It strengthens our belief in the promises of God that He is good and He is for us. Remembering fuels our joy even when surrounded by thieves who want to steal it. Sometimes being a joyful person amid this crazy world seems impossible. Well then, let the impossible commence. Because one of the secrets to…

It was December 1st, 1995, when I walked into the US Marshals office at 601 Market Street in Philadelphia a free man – and exited a prisoner. In handcuffs, ankle cuffs chained together and to two other men shuffling to a waiting van in an underground garage. ‘How the heck did I get here?’ was the question I asked myself many times over the subsequent 90 Days in Federal Prison. Locked up for pleading guilty to multiple felony counts of mail fraud - setting…

We all have ambitions and desires, but as believers, we should weigh them against God’s Word. As important as our earthly pursuits, responsibilities, and relationships may be, they cannot compare to the value of a life spent seeking our heavenly Father. What does it mean to seek God? The phrase describes a wholehearted effort to know the Father and follow Him more closely. Those who pursue this kind of fellowship with God are determined to spend time with Him. They…

Our Creator never intended to be distant from mankind. Instead, He has always wanted an intimate, loving relationship with us. We know this because … He sent His Son. Christ came to earth so we could know God the Father. Jesus is His exact representation; His words and works were the same as God’s (John 5:19; John 12:50). Therefore, when we look at the Son, we are seeing the character of our Father in heaven. He adopted us as His children. Through salvation,…

I remember so well praying for a baby called Craig. I had been asked to visit a woman in the Brompton Hospital. Vivienne had three children and was pregnant with a fourth. Her third child, who was eighteen months old, had a hole in his heart that had been operated on. The operation had not been a success and, not unnaturally, the medical staff wanted to turn the machines off. Many times they asked Vivienne if they could turn the machines off and let the baby die. She said,…

Charles Finney, lawyer and evangelist, was speaking in a New York church in the 1830s. At the end of each evening, he gave people the opportunity to come to the front of the room and commit their life to Jesus. A great many lawyers came to hear him. One night, the Chief Justice of New York was sitting way up in the gallery. As he listened to Finney proclaiming the gospel he became convinced it was true. Then this question came into his mind: ‘Will you go forward like…

In the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be caught in a stampede of wildebeests, knowing that his father, Mufasa, will risk his life to save his son. He does, and Simba is saved, but Mufasa is killed. Scar then turns on Simba and accuses him, at such a vulnerable and desperate moment, of…