The Daily Memo

In the late sixteenth century, William of Orange intentionally flooded much of his nation’s land. The Dutch monarch resorted to such a drastic measure in an attempt to drive out the invading Spaniards. It didn’t work, and a vast swath of prime farmland was lost to the sea. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” they say. In Isaiah’s day, Jerusalem turned to desperate measures when the Assyrian army threatened them. Creating a water…

I can still remember walking into the gym during a Freshman dance, where the college newbies met for an icebreaker the second day of the first semester. I had this cocky attitude trolling for the best-looking girl in the room. Me and a couple buddies of mine. Not that I knew what the plan was. But I sure knew I wanted to get noticed. It was kinda like John Travolta strolling onto the dance floor in his white suit ready to impress in Saturday Night Fever. I think Stayin&;…

Unfortunately, love is often defined in a shallow manner in today’s culture and seen as something that overlooks the need to confront sin. Discipline at all levels is often ignored because holding people accountable is surely not the loving thing to do. God, however, never overlooks sin and wickedness, and since He is love (1 John 4:7–8), it is clear that true love is never afraid to ignore the reality of evil or make it less than what it really is. In today&rsquo…

You aren’t the mistakes you’ve made. You aren’t the labels that have been put on you. And you aren’t the lies the Enemy has tried to sell you. You are who God says you are. You are a child of God. You are the apple of God’s eye. You are sought after. You are more than a conqueror. You are a new creation in Christ. You are the righteousness of Christ. All our identity issues are fundamental misunderstandings of who God is. Guilt issues are a…

After creating this stunning portrait of a total union, the man and woman becoming one, God turns the universe on its head when he tells us that this is what he is seeking with us. In fact, Paul says it is why God created gender and sexuality and marriage—to serve as a living metaphor. He quotes Genesis, then takes it to the nth degree: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This…

In the movie Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, a college professor befriended a stray Akita puppy named Hachi. The dog expressed his loyalty by waiting at the train station each day for the professor to return from work. One day, the professor suffered a fatal stroke. Hachi waited hours at the train station, and for the next ten years he returned each day—awaiting His loving master. Luke tells the story of a man named Simeon who patiently waited for the coming of his Master …

Is it possible that what we perceive to be relational, emotional, and spiritual problems are actually hearing problems—ears that have been deafened to the voice of God? And it’s that inability to hear His voice that causes us to lose our voice and lose our way. Let me make a bold statement: Learning how to hear the voice of God is the solution to a thousand problems! It’s also the key to discovering our destiny and fulfilling our potential. His voice is.…

The cockeyed squid lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone” where sunlight barely filters through the deep waters. The squid’s nickname is a reference to its two extremely different eyes: the left eye develops over time to become considerably larger than the right—almost twice as big. Scientists studying the mollusk have deduced that the squid uses its right eye, the smaller one, to look down into the darker depths. The larger, left eye, gazes,…

At local high school sporting events, Ted was the largest and loudest cheerleader in the stands. Before a degenerative condition took its toll on him, he stood six feet six inches tall and weighed 290 pounds. Ted’s crowd-stirring chants of “Blue!” (the school’s color) and candy-tossing at school events were legendary, earning him the name “Big Blue.” But Ted’s reputation in his community wasn’t just for cheerleading. Neither…