We’ve been watching the markets crashing, businesses shuttering doors, health care workers overwhelmed, people losing their jobs, getting sick, and dying. Now we’re being told this all could last for months. With this ominous foreboding hovering over our world like something from a Hollywood doomsday movie, how exactly does God want us to walk through…
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Suffering often leaves us wondering, “how is this all going to work out?” Suffering creates a sense of chaos; like the puzzle pieces aren’t fitting together. Elisabeth Elliot relays an amusing story that’s helpful for us. Apparently, her husband Jim was quite the handyman. He had the ability to build many things from scratch. Elisabeth…
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The famous missionary, Elisabeth Elliot, wrote a book, No Graven Image. It’s a story about a missionary who goes into the rainforest and wants to translate the Bible. At the end of the story, everything falls apart. The one man in the tribe who can enable her to do the translation and connect her to the tribe, she…
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“Glory.” It’s not a word we can define quickly or easily. We know God is glorious (Ps. 106:20; Jer. 2:13). We know we’re supposed to “glorify” God (Ps. 69:30). But what does it mean? Theologians have debated this for centuries, but one of the best directions to move in is consider what glory literally means: “weight.” When something is “weighty” it’s…
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Jesus said the two greatest commands are: to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). Our best energy should be used in the pursuit of these two commands. I want to take a moment to offer one reflection on how to do that. Take a…
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We live in a “fix it” society. I was reminded just how oriented we are to that the other day when our dryer decided to start screaming like a banshee. It was broken. What did we do? Call a phone number for the repair person. Have a scratch on your car? Here’s some touch-up paint….
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Have you ever had friend tell you about a new restaurant in town that you absolutely need to try out? And maybe the first time they told you about it, you listened as they raved about it and thought “OK, that’s nice. I’ll have to try it sometime.” A month later your friend asks you,…
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“I know what I need. My motives are pure. Certainly this prayer request is something God would want to answer.” How often do these thoughts run through our minds? And when He doesn’t give us what we asked for, we’re perplexed and even a bit agitated. How do we deal with unanswered prayer? Jesus addresses…
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A few years ago, NBA great, LeBron James did an interview with USA Today. Here’s a man who has won multiple NBA titles and MVP awards. He has more endorsement money than any human being can spend in a lifetime. But in this interview, James reveals something Ecclesiastes-like to us: “What really got to me…
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There is a really interesting scene in the movie, Groundhog Day, where weatherman Phil Connors is trying to figure out what is going on. He sits at a bar in a bowling alley with two local guys who are drunk, and he asks them this question: “What would you do if you were stuck in one…
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