Far too many Christians today want a smorgasbord God. The kind of God where you pick and choose when you want Him and when you don’t want Him. But that’s not the kind of God He is. And the kind of people He is looking to partner with in impacting the world are those who follow Him single-heartedly. He doesn’t want you to just align with Him in private. He is not seeking a silent majority. He wants you and me to go public. He calls each of us to declare our allegiance to Him above all else.
This week we will resume our twice-monthly overviews of the books of the Bible. My prayer is that they will give you an overview of what is in each book and make your reading more interesting and spiritually enriching.
It’s time to quit making excuses. Perhaps you didn’t have a good beginning upon which to build. Maybe your parents fought or divorced early on. Maybe you didn’t come from a nice neighborhood or a school system whose funding indicated that they took your future seriously. Maybe you had to raise yourself because your mom worked three jobs. Or maybe you lived in the suburbs, but were abused, neglected or pacified with “stuff”. Maybe you never experienced a loving relationship at home. Whatever the case, where you start ha...
In the Bible, names matter. They have a meaning. Names are never mere nomenclature. People weren’t given names because they sounded nice, or because their parents were naming them after a celebrity, or because their mom suggested it—strongly. Names carried weight and character and were often tied to a person’s destiny. That’s why, throughout Scripture, when God was about to do something new with a person, He would often change the name.
(1942 – 1994)