Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

One illusion that Satan would have you believe is that your past is something you need to dwell on, that it is right there at your heels, dogging your steps. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't want to make light of the past. Especially in the cases where hurts have been done to us, perhaps big hurts during childhood, the emotional scarring is difficult. I'm not saying it isn't difficult, or that it shouldn't be. Yet, dwelling on the past and ruminating on it is not what God wants us to do . Think what better use of that same amount of time it would be if it were put toward worshiping God. Let's take a look at someone in the Bible who was a man of God and who experienced (through Satan's actions against him), a series of calamities so terrible that I'm sure it caused emotional scarring. This man was called Job. He was of good character and he happened to be wealthy. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was b...

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...