Understanding Love

Brokenness is God’s requirement for maximum usefulness.Who do you trust in more than the Lord? What is God stripping away from your life? The answer to these questions may explain why God is working so hard to break your dependence upon anything other than Himself—no matter how long it takes or how difficult the process may be. He’s committed to bringing you to a place of wholeness and spiritual maturity—conforming you to the likeness of His Son .…

Have you ever noticed that the more time you spend with someone, the better you understand where that person is coming from? Our relationship with Jesus is similar. When we have a close connection with Him, we’re not praying to some cold and distant deity “out there somewhere.” Instead, we are speaking with a God who loves us, sustains us, and molds us into His own image. That changes how we approach Him, doesn’t it? Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus;…

‘‘This seemingly insubstantial fact revolutionized my life,” wrote Adrian Plass, author of The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37¾. He continued, “I became a Christian when I was sixteen years old, but it wasn’t until I was thirty-seven that I absorbed an essential truth. God is nice and he likes me.” Sadly, deep down many people think that God is not that nice, he does not like us very much and he spends most of his time being…

In Isaiah 55, God declares, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). In fact, that’s one of the biggest frustrations of the Christian life—a lack of understanding about God’s ways. There are times when we could really use a miracle, and He doesn’t come through for us, which can lead to confusion, disappointment, and anger. Why did God let me down? God works in both supernatural and ordinary ways, and…

The secret of happiness is this: God is the love you are longing for. We live in a love story. We are created for romance and we have an insatiable capacity for it. Now, God gave us such a heart; it was one of his first gifts to us. (You have to have a heart to live in a love story). Then he gives to us this world that is so breathtakingly beautiful. The earth is filled with the love of the Lord (Psalm 33:5) and you see it in the fact that he made grass just firm enough…

Robert Todd Lincoln lived under the extensive shadow of his father, beloved American president Abraham Lincoln. Long after his father’s death, Robert’s identity was engulfed by his father’s overwhelming presence. Lincoln’s close friend, Nicholas Murray Butler, wrote that Robert often said, “No one wanted me for secretary of war; they wanted Abraham Lincoln’s son. No one wanted me for minister to England; they wanted Abraham Lincoln&rsquo…

We need Jesus like we need oxygen. Like we need water. Like the branch needs the vine. Jesus is not merely a figure for devotions. He is the missing essence of your existence. Whether we know it or not, we are desperate for Jesus.   To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. To know him as he is, is to come home. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness. The purpose of your being here on this planet, at this moment in,…

As reported in the news recently, four Nigerian men were discovered and rescued in Brazil after crossing the Atlantic from Africa as stowaways on a cargo ship.  The four exhausted men spent fourteen harrowing days perched inside the shallow opening above the ship’s rudder, under the stern.  They ran out of food and water ten days into the journey and had barely slept nor made a sound for fear of falling into the water or being discovered by the ship’s crew.;…

If I am saved and all of my sins are forgiven, why not continue to sin? The apostle Paul answered a very similar question in Romans 6:1-2, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” The idea that a person could “trust in Jesus Christ” for salvation and then go on living just as he/she lived before, is absolutely foreign to the Bible. For the truly,…