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Sometimes life boils down to a simple risk versus reward analysis. If you see someone walking by who needs help, are you willing to step out of your comfort for the reward of being the hands and feet of God? If you see someone who looks like they are having
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Attention to detail matters. One of the fundamental tenets I use when judging another person is this: If I cannot trust you in the small things, then I certainly won’t trust you with anything that matters to me. For example, if you can’t be trusted to genuinely stop
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It is interesting how people react to a supernatural event. Weird things happen. Maybe they don’t happen every day, but weird things happen. You might encounter one significant hard-to-explain event. You might also encounter a string of tiny events that individually wouldn’t be worth noting but together they
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Sin is destructive. Evil is destructive. Certainly, sin and evil have other dynamics and descriptors that can be added to their definition, but they are always destructive. One of the earliest – and in my opinion best – definitions of sin is that which breaks relationship. Sin breaks relationship with one another.
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Legion. We understand the word, but we don’t necessarily understand its true historical context. For most people, legion just means many. For the Romans, a legion meant at least 5,000 people and frequently as many as 6,000. Furthermore, that only describes the fighting force; it wouldn’t
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Getting what we need is seldom as easy as it looks. A good education takes lots of consistent work. Raising a good family takes an enormous amount of continued effort. Thriving in a good marriage takes regular intentional action. All these are good, and the work required should be satisfying
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Jesus frequently adopts a mind-blowing perspective. He voluntarily allowed Himself to be baptized by a man wearing camel hair and eating locusts. Jesus redefined family, calling those around Him His mother and brothers. Jesus willingly confronted the powerful elite in Hebrew society. Jesus fell asleep when a storm threatened His
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Imagine feeling the rebuke of Jesus upon your life. For most Christians, we would categorize it as a low spot in life. Who wants to disappoint the Son of God? Yesterday, the story ended with the disciples being so afraid they accuse Jesus of not caring. Said like this, it
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Genuinely following Jesus is not always easy. With respect to today’s passage, a bit of discomfort is in order. Jesus does something here that should make the uninitiated stop and think. Before getting to that, it is important to understand a history lesson. The Sea of Galilee is notorious
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Even Jesus had favorites. As a teacher, it is routine to have students argue about who my favorite is. Children do the same with their parents. Employees may even do this with their bosses in the right working environment. The reality is that everyone has people with whom they get
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The life cycle is an amazing thing. Science can explain about how organisms grow, yet it is amazing that most life on the planet starts off as a single cell, growing piece by piece for millions of cycles until it becomes complex and amazing. I’m a rather big guy,
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Living by faith is a real skill we all need. When I fall asleep, I have faith I’ll wake up fine, my house won’t get broken into, my electric will be on, and my hot water tank will function. When I stick clothes into my washer, I have