Luke 12:34, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What our heart loves is where our heart lives. And where our heart lives determines everything about us, since from it flow all the streams of our life (Prov.4:19). May we—by the Spirit—be enamored with the crucified and risen Lord and so […]
Luke 11:34, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.” “Eye” here means something like “perspective” or “mindset” or “way of perceiving and assigning value to the world.” Jesus is
Proverbs 1:20-22, “Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy street she cries out… ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?’” At first it seems strange that Wisdom would speak to people in the “noisy streets” and “markets” and bustling of
Philippians 4:8-9, “Finally brothers, as much as is true, as much as is honorable, as much as is just, as much as is pure, as much as is lovely, as much as is admirable, if anything is virtuous and if anything is praise worthy, think on these things. And that which you have learned
Psalm 119:45, “…I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.” Our natural mind tells us that doing “whatever we want” is the path of freedom, but that is like the man with an anchor tied around his neck saying that true freedom is to follow wherever his anchor leads….Not
2 Cor 7:10, “…godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” Short Thoughts: In the midst of grief over our sin, may we not fold inward toward self-destruction, rather, may we turn outward and fall in blood-bought repentance on Him who bore all sin and grief
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2 Corinthians 1:5, “…just as the sufferings of Christ abound unto us, so through Christ our comfort also abounds.” The phrase, “just as” at the beginning of this verse refers back to what Paul has been talking about in the preceding verses, namely, the afflictions which he and others believers suffer. This is important
Luke 1:52, “…he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate…” When Christ is exalted in His humiliation on the throne of Calvary, He re-defines greatness, and so shatters the proud thrones of the world while lifting the humble to the throne of God.
1 Corinthians 6:19–20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” One of the foundational beliefs in the present Western world is “I am my own,” or in other terms, “autonomy.” “I can do what I want with my body”; “I can do what I
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Philippians 3:12-14, “…I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” I’m not reading in Philippians right now,
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Jude 24-25, “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! And see if there be any grevious way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Of all people the Christian should hide nothing….especially from God! Our debt was paid at the cross, so may the Lord search our souls to the marrow and
2 Corinthians 13:8-9, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, FOR my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest
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Jeremiah 3:1, “You have played the whore with many lovers…” Jeremiah 31:3-4, “…I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel.” Only the everlasting, sin-bearing, dying and rising love of YHWH can turn the
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Proverbs 28:26, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”
Romans 12:1, “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” By His grace, may all that we are, have, and ever hope to be, be daily laid on the altar.
James 1:2-3, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Christian, the fires of our love-ordained trials will become the cords that bind our faith more surely to Christ–the one who bore the equivalence all of our suffering
Galatians 5:16-17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh…” May an overriding desire for Christ, granted by the indwelling Spirit, drive us to
Proverbs 5:3-4, “The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.” It is true of all idolatry…
Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” To take up our cross means to follow after Jesus Christ–the Beautiful One who has satisfied our soul, who is the End of all our Desiring, who is Divine Love incarnate. It means to press
