The verse that I thought of first is this one: John 15:4-5 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. The dictionary uses quite a few words to define the meaning of abide. They include: to […]
Tag Archives: #Church
God answered my prayer, so what should I do in order to show that I am thankful?
May I suggest that your heart will lead you. I find that actions follow attitude pretty reliably. If God has answered your prayer, then apparently you cared enough about something to pray about it. I hope that, in the end, you asked that God would bring about whatever He thought best in the situation. I […]
Where do I go to learn about being a faithful, wise, and generous steward of God’s gifts?
It is a wonderful thing that someone even thinks to ask this question. For someone to become curious about how to walk in partnership with God and help to parcel out His blessings speaks to someone’s desire to become more Godly. All too often people are only concerned with how to acquire the blessings of […]
The Gospel for this Sunday says:the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. What does that mean?
I borrowed this from one of my favorite bible commentaries: In Lk.16:8 the lesson is that the sons of this world are wiser in their generation than the sons of light. That means that, if only the Christian was as eager and ingenious in his attempt to attain goodness as the man of the world […]
Do you believe that people that commit murder will be forgiven?
There are few sins that are more serious than the taking of a human life. The only one that I can think of right now is that of leading someone’s soul astray. Unfortunately, both sins are far too common these days. But frankly, I shouldn’t have added those words “these days”. I am getting to […]
Why would Jesus want us to hate our family in order to be His disciple?
It sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But Jesus is making an important point here. He would grant, I think, that family is important. After all one of the Ten Commandments is “Honor thy Father and thy Mother.” But when it comes to eternal things, just exactly how high does family rank? The Gospel for this Sunday […]
Why do you need a priest for confession and can’t your sins be forgiven just by asking God in prayer?
I did some searching in the Bible to try and find something that would support the idea of confessing directly to God. I found quite a bit about confession and repentance and I did actually find one place that lends support to the idea that we can confess directly to God and receive forgiveness. That […]
In the Gospel of Luke it says: “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” What does that mean?
This saying of Jesus comes from the 13th chapter of Luke’s Gospel. If we look at this chapter we find that Jesus has been dealing with a series of people who somehow believe that they are more special than other people. He talks about some people who were victims of tragedy and notes that they were […]
How can we encourage others along their faith journey?
Last week we dealt with how we handle the struggles and difficulties of our own faith lives. It seems a natural extension to talk a bit about how we should go about helping others to deal with their difficulties. I want to begin by offering two observations: 1. Pity and the sentiment of “you poor dear” […]
How do we handle questions, doubts, and struggles of life in our faith walk?
Most of the time we experience a crisis or other kind of life struggle when our expectations are not realized. That cuts both ways. When someone that we expect to be brutal and hateful turns out to be warm and personable, we don’t quite know how to react and we often react defensively and suspiciously, […]