Understanding Love

God wants to give you the best. Not the easiest or most luxurious but the best—as He defines it. Remember, His will is “good, pleasing, and perfect.” But most Christians don’t experience God’s best. Why? One reason is because of lies: Lies about the meaning of life and about God’s purposes for us. Lies keep us conformed to the ways of the world. Looking at life the way the world does blocks us from knowing God and understanding His.…

There is a great deal of misinformation regarding the meaning of the term “born again.” Such ignorance and confusion could have disastrous ramifications if those who think they are born again really aren’t. In a conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus used this term to explain how one enters the kingdom of heaven. Nicodemus thought the Lord was referring to a subsequent physical birth and couldn’t fathom how this was possible, but Jesus was speaking in…

Most people go through their entire lives without anyone, ever, speaking honest, loving, direct words to the most damaging issues in their lives. Pause for a moment, and count the times this has been done for you. Better, pause and count the times you have offered this to someone you love. Let’s be honest—why aren’t we more honest with each other? Because it will cost us. Socrates didn’t exactly get a warm reception for telling the truth. John the…

Radamenes was just a kitten when his owner dropped him off at an animal shelter, thinking he was too ill to recover. The kitten was nursed back to health and adopted by the vet. He then became a fulltime resident at the shelter and now spends his days “comforting” cats and dogs—just out of surgery or recovering from an illness—through his warm presence and gentle purr. That story is a small picture of what our loving God does for us—and what we…

Peter was one of Jesus' closest friends, one of only three that were invited into his innermost circle. In Gethsemane, at his hour of greatest need, Jesus again took Peter aside, poured his heart out to him; he looked to Peter for strength. Three years of this, and who knows how many other stories. Peter must have known, I have a special place in Jesus' heart. So, how do you suppose Peter felt after he denied Christ—not just once, but three times? It must…

I get the local newspaper in an email from my inbox every morning. Not because I necessarily like reading the news, but my Mother still gets the paper delivered to her residence and I get the online version as a benefit. Many years ago I stopped reading the paper regularly due to the bias evident in almost every so-called news story - depending on the author or the delivery method. If I want news I’ll usually look at my BBC app or phone a friend. It must have been a…

Your heavenly Father is perfectly wise. Everything he does is perfect. Every thought and idea he has is filled with complete wisdom. What's more, through the Holy Spirit you have access to that wisdom. James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." Your God loves you so much that he's just waiting to bestow on you his vast wisdom. He never wants you to suffer from a…

Think about the most famous person you’ve ever met. How did this happen? How did you react to this person? Now reflect on the scene described in verses 2–3 of James 2. If this were to happen in your church, what do you think would happen? How would you treat the two people differently? We can figure out from this letter what the problems were with the people James wrote to. Those people gossiped sometimes. They got angry with one another. And when a rich person…

In his book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, co-authored with Philip Yancey, Dr. Paul Brand observed, “A hummingbird heart weighs a fraction of an ounce and beats eight hundred times a minute; a blue whale’s heart weighs half a ton, beats only ten times per minute, and can be heard two miles away. In contrast to either, the human heart seems dully functional, yet it does its job, beating 100,000 times a day [65–70 times a minute] with no time off for rest,…