Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

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...