I have this habit of falling in love with words, especially with words from the Word. Today the sentence I say over and over again is from Psalm 32: I live and breathe God” (Psalm 34:2, MSG,*). I want to live and breathe God. What does it mean? Live and breathe God This sounds like a very intimate way of living, doesn’t it? For sure, it’s not a long-distance relationship if we live and breath God. It’s an ongoing, all-in kind…
Here’s what you need to know today and every day for the rest of your life: you are God’s beloved. Nothing will ever change it. You are God’s beloved, that’s your identity. For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. (Zephaniah 3:17, NLT) David G. Benner writes “What a…
WhatsApp seems to be the way to instant message these days. It’s a fast and easy way to keep the communication lines open with your inner circles. What about God? Is he in your inner circle of communication? Do you WhatsApp with God? Do you open God’s WhatsApp messages to you? Or do you ignore them? Is God your first go to person whenever you want to share something? Or has someone replaced him in your life? Smart phones and…
One of the great things about the Bible is that people are mentioned by their names. There are lists after lists telling us the names of the people involved. What does that have to do with you? Everything. Just like the people gone before us, also you are special. God knows you by name. God knows all of us by name. We are not just numbers. We are persons with names and each of us have a different life story….
One of the most famous Bible verses is Psalm 119:105 (AMP): Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. There are songs about it and almost everybody – it seems like it – knows it by heart. I’ve always loved it too but today I read it in the Message paraphrase and saw it very differently afterwards. By your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path….
We all know the the story of Jonah. We chuckle, we might find Jonah even endearing. We might marvel how God caught this runaway and especially how Jonah moved from being prayerless to praise-filled in the belly of the whale. Jonah experienced first-hand God’s mercy right then and there, probably for the first time in his life. Jonah knew God, we might even say that he had a relationship with God. But yet he was a stranger to grace. Suddenly…
