The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Tag Archives: Christian Living
The Wait is Over
The last time I wrote, I talked about God’s call for me to step down and wait. God made it clear that I was entering a new season in my life. I didn’t know what that would look like, but I knew it would include recovery from something.
In June I discovered my new season quite suddenly when I had a heart attack while on vacation. After five days in the hospital, we cancelled the remainder…..
While some information about Heaven appears throughout the Bible, the book of Revelation gives us a fairly clear picture. Like Isaiah who was also given a vision of Heaven, John expressed in human terms something that could not possibly be understood outside the spiritual context in which he saw it. What he witnessed was prophetic and hectic in that his vision was of things to come. In the middle of all the end-of-the-world activity, however, snippets of Heaven in the…..
Someone recently asked me about what the Bible says regarding our glorified bodies in heaven. From 1 Corinthians 15:52-56, we know that “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye [when] the trumpet shall sound, the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed. For this corruptible [body] must put on incorruption and this mortal [body] must put on immortality. So when this corruptible [body] shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal [body] shall have put…..
We are the Body of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are divided out to each of us are for the efficient functioning of the body, directed by the Holy Spirit. According to Merrill Unger, “A gift implies a settled and continual abilities to do something again and again” (from The Gift of Seeing Angels and Demons: A Handbook for Discerners of Spirits, pp 15-16). There are several Bible passages that, between them, build the list of…..
Our relationship with God is not one-sided. He created us for companionship with Him. In the Garden of Eden, He was in the habit of walking and talking to Adam. When sin entered, that fellowship was broken. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again, the chasm between us and God was bridged. As Christians we have that fellowship again, in prayer. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus tells us to “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye…..
Although the information coming out of CDC is sometimes questionable these days, their sleep needs chart draws from several reputable studies. Here’s how much sleep their website suggests, by age, for optimal health levels (https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.html):
Many people struggle to maintain healthy sleep habits for a variety of reasons including outside disruptors, work schedules, and emotional burdens. God’s promise of rest in Matthew 11:28…..
The living sacrifice described in Romans 12:1-5 involves our personal commitment to habitual and continuous worship of God demonstrated by the way we think and live. Each verse presents a different aspect of our daily lives permeated by God: Personal Holiness, Personal Purity, Personal Humility, Personal Collaborative Approach, and Personal Perspective of Unity in Christ. Today we will look at verse three.
3. Personal Humility – “For I say to every man that is among you, through the grace given unto…..
Once we have, by faith, accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we spend the rest of our lives learning what that means. Some define this process as a developing maturity of faith, others as a progressive sanctification. Setting semantics aside, it is God’s training of His people through biblical instruction towards both foundational support for our earthly journey and preparation for eternity in Heaven. With time we develop an increasing sense of Bible-centric attitudes and actions as we experience…..
Planted!
One of my favorite verses is Psalm 55:22, “Cast your burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain you: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” The New Testament version of this is found in 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon him; for he cares for you.”
Websters dictionary lists at least ten synonyms for the word “move”. They include proceed, persuade, activate, drive, impel, start, stir, act, budge, and evacuate. Not all of these…..
What do the women of the Bible named Rahab and Ruth have in common? They are Gentile women listed in the otherwise Jewish genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1). In biblical terms, there are only two people groups: Jews and Gentiles (meaning everyone who is not a Jew).
Rahab was the woman who hid the two Hebrew spies when they came to Jericho. Typically understood to be a prostitute, her presence in the line of Christ is even more surprising than…..