As I am preparing to teach Christian Ethics starting next week, I have been thinking of holiness a lot. We are called to be holy like our God is holy, right? It is a tall order for human beings but there is no way around it. No one is excused from pursuing perfect holiness. The Bible clearly tells us to be holy over and over. My life experience tells me it’s undoable on my own. I need help. Thankfully, God…
Do you know that everything is grace? For real. We can brag about grace but nothing else. But in grace there is plenty to brag about. Grace is even more wonderful than we can ever understand. Because grace changes everything and everything is grace. When we live in grace, we don’t have to puff up our egos or try to be better than we are. You know, we are all just grace-magnets, that’s all. Nobody is better than others. Whatever…
All children of God are all called to grow into spiritual maturity. We are called to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are called to grow up in Christ. How is your spiritual growing up process going? “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Matthew 5:48, MSG,*) The key ingredient in the…
How do you live out your faith in your every day life? What do you do daily to feed your faith? Do you have some daily faith practices? Or are you asking why you should practice your faith daily? Well, Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread (Matthew 6:11, AMP). And that’s not just bread we are talking about here. It’s anything and everything we need in our lives. Daily prayer helps us to remember we truly are dependent…
Do you know how to be generous? Or are you stingy with time, money or possessions? We are naturally selfish; being generous is foreign to us. We think we will ensure our well-being if we store money or keep stuff. But that’s not how it works. We are not in control of future. We are not in control of happiness. We are not in control of well-being. But blessedly that’s not the end of the story. We are not doomed….
Blaise Pascal’s famous quote “Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; We do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ” gives us a lot to ponder. It states that Christ is the only way to God. But that’s not so surprising. It is one of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity. But the second part -that states that we can’t even know ourselves without Christ- can sound a bit odd for many. How could our identity…
Ignoring God leads to an empty life. We can try to fill our lives with different things. But because we were created to God’s image we long to be with God. That’s why we can’t find happiness outside of God. Like Blaise Pascal has said “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” The stronger the dissonance between…
