Walking With God

“Why should I fast?” It’s a question many Christians ask, and one the Bible answers. In Scripture, fasting is often associated with seeking God for a specific purpose. Daniel fasted in order to plead for Israel’s release from Babylonian captivity, which God had promised (Dan. 9:1-3). Nehemiah fasted for a similar reason when he heard of the desperate state of the Jews who had returned to the land after captivity (Neh. 1:4). When we look closer at…

Some people don’t believe Jesus is God, so they claim He was simply a good person. Others may intellectually acknowledge Jesus as God’s Son but have no personal relationship with Him. His true followers, however, believe in their heart that Christ is Savior (Rom. 10:9) and they’ve been adopted into His family. Ephesians 2:1-2 says that those who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus are spiritually dead and living according to the sin nature.…

Read through Proverbs, and you’re likely to notice God has some harsh words for those who are arrogant. But that doesn’t mean we’re to embrace self-loathing or low self-esteem. Neither extreme accurately captures who we are in Christ. In fact, both are a form of pride, as they involve determining our value for ourselves rather than leaving that to God. Jesus told His disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in…

Jesus’ values are nothing like the world’s, so grasping who we are as God’s children can be hard (Rom. 8:16-17). Since the culture’s way of thinking is powerful and at times intoxicating, it’s easy to lose our way while pursuing the abundant life God promises. If that happens, the freedom we expected to experience in Christ can feel weighed down by sinful behaviors and thought patterns—not least of which is worry. Anxiety comes readily…

Abiding in the love of God is our only hope, the only true home for our hearts. It's not that we mentally acknowledge that God loves us. It's that we let our hearts come home to him, and stay in his love. MacDonald says it this way: When our hearts turn to him, that is opening the door to him ... then he comes in, not by our thought only, not in our idea only, but he comes himself, and of his own will. Thus the Lord, the Spirit, becomes the soul of our souls ...…

Solitude—a time set apart where the rush, noise, and anxiety of the world fall mute on the ears and heart of a child of God completely lost in the peace and presence of the Creator. Solitude is a time to be with your heavenly Father, free from the distractions the world offers us at seemingly every moment. We are made for consistent time spent in solitude. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, "We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and:…

Has your life turned out as you expected? We would probably all have to answer no to that question. Only God knows the future and the plans He has for us. But even though we face unexpected disappointments and hardships, there is one thing we can know for certain—God’s plans for us are always good (Rom. 8:28). Since the exiled people of Judah wanted to return to Israel as quickly as possible, they started listening to the bad counsel of false prophets. To…

It’s fairly obvious that peace is incompatible with hurry. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re running late to “catch” a flight, or ten minutes late for an appointment, or overdue on an assignment, take an interior inventory and see if you feel the deep shalom of God in your soul. Do you sense a grounded, present sense of calm? Or something else? And yet: we continue to cram more and more in to our already overfull lives, forcing us to…

Love is the highest value in the kingdom economy, but it’s not the only value. The triumvirate of love, joy and peace show up again and again in Jesus’ teachings, and the writings of Paul. They are the core reality we aim at in our spiritual journey with Jesus. All three are more than just emotions, they are overall conditions of the heart. They aren’t just pleasant feelings; they are the kinds of people we become through our apprenticeship to Jesus, who…