Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

Up until now, the book of Psalms was always the hardest one for me to read, because I found it difficult to see how each sentence made sense. Co-incidentally, I happened to be participating in an Advent Bible study at the same time as I was reading Psalms in my daily readings. In the Advent study, there was a lot of focus on waiting (for the Messiah, in previous times; for His return, in current times). This shed a lot of light onto Psalms. Once I started reading Psalms in a future-tense way instead of a current-tense way, it made a lot more sense. The writers of Psalms were expressing their thankfulness for past promises and also for their trust in the Lord for the future . They were not (quite as much as I thought) expressing their immediate, present-day situation. Psalms suddenly became a lot more readable and made a lot more sense once I realized that these writings were about yearnings and not about current states. If you found this post interesting, you may also like th...

I had never tackled the topic of money before because it was not always clear to me what the Bible said about it. Part of that was bound up in hearing what others think is the correct attitude toward money versus what the Bible actually says. Part was also due to me needing to read the Bible through multiple times before some level of understanding and consistency sank in to me. So. The Bible does not say that rich is good and poor is bad; nor that poor is good and rich is bad. What it does make very clear is that it is one's attitude toward money that is important. Let's take a look: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. 1 Timothy 6:10 This verse says that the love of money is the root of evil. Not money per se, but the love of it. It also explains quite clearly why this is so: because it will cause people to wander away from the faith....

I have heard many times before that Christians are ambassadors for God's kingdom. But I'd never stopped to really think what that meant until recently. To put it into perspective, imagine you are the ambassador for an earthly country. That's an incredibly important job. In that situation, you would be charged with responsibilities that had very far-reaching ramifications. As much as we look up to earthly ambassadors, should we not then attach even more importance to the job of being ambassador to the creator of the Universe, the King of Heaven? We are very fortunate to know God and Jesus, and we are also fortunate to be their ambassadors here on Earth. We should be honored to be tasked with that role. Yet how many of us take our responsibilities less seriously than what they would if they had a job as an ambassador to an earthly country? I know I'm guilty of that. And our job as ambassadors for God's kingdom is even more important than that to an earthly count...

If the Bible is sufficient to generate faith, then after we have faith, is there any point reading the Bible? Yes there is: a really crucial reason for reading the Bible (besides it being the Word of God and crucial for that reason alone) is that we actually get to know God better. We can see more and more consistencies in His attitudes toward things. After my experiment of reading through the Bible with no pre-conceived notions , I used to think that the main thing about the Bible was that it was sufficient to generate faith. This is of course the important thing, but as I read it over more times, I realized I was also getting to know God more and more. In my first reading, I would sometimes be puzzled as to why God acted a certain way to certain happenings. In the second reading, many of those started to make sense. This was because I was getting to know God more. If I had not been reading the Bible, chunks of it might seem incomprehensible or confusing. There will always be ...

It's all too easy to feel that the Old Testament is out of touch. I used to feel like that for a long time. I would read the New Testament, and I felt like I could see the relevance. For that reason, the New Testament felt more "real" to me than the Old Testament. After reading the Bible all the way through a few times, I know that the Old Testament is just as relevant and "real" as the New Testament. I'll explain this here using an example. First though, the best way to consider the New Testament is as a continuation of the Old Testament; not as an alternative or something that is supplanting it. I find it helpful to think of the Old Testament as the "First Testament". For our example, remember when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt? At first they were joyful, but then they started grumbling during the long journey. During this time, some of them even started worshiping other gods. God didn't like this, and he punished them. Then t...

 As Jesus was dying on the cross, he said some important words to the disciple whom he loved, thought to be the youngest disciple John. but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. John 19: 25-27 After Jesus died and rose again, he was later seen by his disciples and he had an important commandment for them: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Sp...

Even though he is the Son of God, Jesus in human form still had human emotions. He was not a robot! He suffered terribly during his crucifixion. In this post though, I'm not going to focus on the suffering that he had then (as important as it is). We're going to take a look at how and when he anticipated this bad time ahead. In a previous post , I pointed out that Jesus did not just curl into a ball and give up on his ministry days, even though he surely had some inkling that he had to go through a very bad time at some point in the future. He carried out his ministry, teaching and healing people, right up until the end. The part I want to focus on is the night immediately before his arrest. He was distressed at what was to come. The Bible says: And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, “My soul is ...

I know I've covered a bit about forgiveness before; what it is and isn't. But here, I also want to cover more about why and even more importantly, how we should forgive. I have mentioned before that forgiveness forgives someone for a past hurt. It does not require you to have that person in your life again . The person does not necessarily even need to know you have forgiven him or her; that's between you and God. It also does not require you to put any future trust in that person. Here I'd like to cover the motivation for forgiveness. It's simple: we should forgive because God forgave us first. Consider all the sins I've done against heaven; there are countless of those. Because these sins are forgiven via Christ's death on the cross, then surely likewise I should forgive those who have sinned against me. Indeed, the Lord's Prayer says ..."forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." The word "as" is key here....

One thing that has helped me a bit is to remind myself that I should not descend into worrying about other people's relationships with others. I'm not saying we shouldn't care. Certainly, if the opportunity is given to us to help a relationship between others we should do so. However, the relationships of others to others is ultimately between themselves and God. If I find myself getting a little too concerned about the relationship between two other people (neither of whom is myself), there is a simple reminder I give myself. It's this: "I'm not so perfect that I should worry about this person's relationship with that person." I add "Instead I need to focus on my relationship with God, and my relationships with others." This is a very good and very timely reminder. We each have our own relationship with God, and our own relationships with others to focus on. The time spent on those is infinitely more useful than any time spent worrying...

I'm now getting to the close of my 3rd time reading through the Bible. I got a lot out of it, but it took me much longer than a year, and I'd like to shorten that for the next time. I also had the problem of not making a consistent mix of Old Testament and New Testament, and wound up with lots of extra Old Testament left over at the end that I needed to read without the New Testament. There are many 1-year Bible reading plans. The problem is that many of these require a lot of hopping around in the Bible, necessitating always having plan handy, as well as possibly multiple bookmarks. Instead, I wanted something fairly simple. Previously I'd been doing a bit from the Old Testament and a bit from the New Testament each day, but without any prescribed amounts. This meant I was reading unevenly between the two, and wound up with a lot of Old Testament left over at the end. Reading x number of verses a day doesn't always help either, because some verses are so much lon...

It often seems so easy to fall into making a bad decision. Even if we know it's something we shouldn't do (e.g. having extra helpings of dessert when we're not truly hungry), it seems so tempting to say yes. I know I struggle with this sort of thing, and it seems easy to justify falling into temptation, especially with the dessert example ("I'm not hurting anyone, after all", I'd tell myself.) Finally, I heard something at church that made sense to me. The pastor said something which I'll paraphrase here: "Better not to fall into the temptation. You'll wind up with a bit of regret at not doing the tempting activity, but it's at least better than to fall into the temptation and wind up with regret at doing it - plus guilt." This is true: it's a small amount of regret on one hand, weighed against a larger amount of regret PLUS guilt on the other hand. When I phrase it like that, it makes it much easier for me to say no to ...

Many people have a fear of missing out. They are insecure and don't want to be left out of something that's going on. Yet, I've noticed that fear of missing out is almost always applied to things like parties and get-togethers, but almost never to anything crucially important. For example, what about being saved? You'd think many people would have a huge fear of missing out on that. You'd think the people who were worried about missing out on something as minor (in the long term) as parties would all flock to churches so as not to miss out on the good news of Jesus. You would expect they'd all want to be saved. Of course, fear of missing out is not a good reason in and of itself to want to be saved by Jesus. We should want to be saved because we truly believe in Jesus, not just out of a fear of missing out. Missing out on a party only affects us in the here-and-now. But if we miss out on salvation, it affects us for eternity. This is something that w...

At church a few weeks ago, we studied how Jesus often went away to pray, even though many people were requesting his attention. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone Matthew 14: 23 and Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God.  Luke 6: 12 There were many, many occasions where Jesus was talking with God the father. Jesus made it a huge priority, even at times when others were looking for him. In other words, prayer was not just important to Jesus, but necessary. The pastor remarked that if one so strong as Jesus needed to pray, how much more we so weak need it. That comment stayed with me. If we think we don't have time to pray, we are wrong. No matter how busy we are - and Jesus himself was busy - we must make time for prayer every day. Because if one so strong needs it, then by definition we must need it even more. If you...

Abraham (then called Abram), met Melchizedek. Let's take a look at this mysterious Melchizedek. Abram came back from battle where he, along with some allies, defeated his enemies and rescued captives and freed them. On his way back after his victory, he met Melchizedek. Who is this mysterious figure? Let's take a look at this passage in the Bible: When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan.  He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.  Then he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods, and the women and the people.  After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).  And King Melchizede...

I had a revelation recently. In previous posts, I did not understand how people like Jesus's mother Mary and other people in the Bible had so much faith. When they were told there was a plan from God, OK, then it seems straightforward to have faith, but when things go wrong - like when there was no room at the inn for Mary - it's easy to have doubts. Yet Mary didn't doubt, she still had faith in God's plan. To me, that was (and still is) absolutely amazing. I'm certain I would have had a lot of doubts in her place. Yet recently, it was revealed to me that the ground is in fact rock-solid-steady during those times. It's that it only  seems less steady when something unexpected-to-us happens, like when there was no room at the inn for Mary. Still, God had made provision for her. None of this was unexpected to Him. If you know for sure you are doing something according to God's plan, then Satan will make the ground appear shaky. But actually, the grou...