Devotionals

The fruit of those branches grafted into the vine and abiding in that vine is a visibly changed life. There will always be pruning which is necessary to spur the germination of the fruit of the Spirit of Christ, but this is a branch that is not destined for the brush heap!

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]   The day the Iraq War began in March 2003 I arrived at my parent’s home in Colorado about 7 pm. They had expected me a day earlier, but one of the biggest snow storms to ever hit the state had snowed-in the conference center not far from them »

Within hours, the sleeping Peter, and the impetuous defender, is denying His Lord as he stands “alone among hostile and indifferent bystanders and observers. This is definitely a malady that needs healing. Peter overcame it, coming out of his crucible refined for leadership in the early church.

The encounter that Jesus had with a Canaanite woman whom He initially rebuffed will tell you something about your own faith; is it push-over or push-through faith? The question is critical if you are genuinely intent on taking Jesus at His word concerning the kingdom of heaven and your entrance into it.

Two locations, separated by time but forever joined in the greatest story of history: Eden and Gethsemane. The season of Lent can have many sanctifying influences on the believer’s life, but none so evident or “Lenten as our battle with the pervasiveness of sin in us. From the symbol of ashes placed on the forehead on Ash Wednesday. . . what more prominent location to declare that sin has infiltrated every part of our being . . . to the darkness that spreads over the land on Good Friday when the battle with sin reaches its climax on the cross. It is finished there when the Victor lowers His head and dies.

In the midst of this last week of terror and suffering by the Japanese people, I have received information from many different sources generated by the earthquake and tsunami and its aftermath of death, destruction, and radiation fears from the severely damaged nuclear power plants. It is important to get some balanced perspective from as many sensible sources as possible, recognizing that the media will give a picture that is not nearly compatible with the full truth, since they are more pressured to excite and sustain readership and viewership than objectively convey actual facts on the ground.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]   Recently when writing a college reference for one of our young men soon to graduate from the Paul Anderson Youth Home and High School, I highlighted one of his traits which first came to light after he had been here for some time; a trait which I felt »

A number of the older military chapels I have been in are decorated with beautiful stained glass windows some of which were designed to honor soldiers who died in battle for their country. During a worship service in such a chapel a young boy whispered to his father, sitting next to him in the pew, asking who the figures were in the stained glass windows. The father whispered back that they were soldiers who died in the service; to which the boy asked...

Crying shows man’s humanity and the nature of the soul. It displays an aspect of the image of God in which we are created. It speaks of humility and a sense of sin; of depravity and genuine repentance. It expresses an overwhelming sense of awe at the glory and majesty of God and His Son as marveled at in their works and their creation.

"If we are good why are we allowing this to happen?" We are not winning this battle of eliminating sexual trafficking of children; and we are allowing butchers like the abortionist Dr. Gosnell of Philadelphia to ply their trade in human slaughter across the land. God forgive us!

C.S. Lewis wrote in his classic, Mere Christianity, that “Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind… It is the characteristic which predominates in the atheist mind and pulls the rest of us in their direction more than we are willing to admit, even though we say we believe in God and His Son with the fiercest resolve.

Is marriage passé today? Does it have any value in a “modern world? Or is God just the Grinch who stole Christmas in commanding that a man and a woman reserve sexual relations for marriage, and ought to honor the marriage bed by being faithful to one another?