The appeal of sensual lust works like a magnet, drawing two “sudden and fierce” forces toward each other—inner desire and an outer bait. Let’s face it, you can’t escape the bait if you live in the real world.
Read MoreTag Archives: Genesis
Lessons in Adversity
This is a good time to call to mind several lessons we can learn from Jacob’s family and Joseph’s adversity. The first is obvious. No enemy is more subtle than passivity. When parents are passive, they may eventually discipline, but by then the delayed reaction is often carried out in anger.
Read MoreGod’s Training Manual
Before we get better acquainted with Joseph, let’s take a quick glance at some background information. It will help if you remember that his biography falls neatly into three distinct segments.
Read MoreThe Case against Vanilla
I cannot imagine anything more boring and less desirable than being poured into the mold of predictability as I grow older. Few things interest me less than the routine, the norm, the expected, the status quo. Call it the rebel in me, but I simply cannot bear plain vanilla when life offers so many other colorful and stimulating flavors. A fresh run at life by an untried route will get my vote every time—in spite of the risk. Stay open-minded for a moment and I’ll try to show you why.
Read MoreLifesaving Strategies for Resisting Depravity’s Undertow
It’s impossible to exaggerate our world’s moral erosion. Culture has reached an all-time low. Our cities have laws that forbid open sewers and unsafe cesspools, but we lack laws that forbid obscenity and pornography. Unrestrained, immorality parades through every public square in a brazen display of depravity akin to Sodom’s. The sordid account of Sodomite […]
Read MoreSurprises
The feelings are familiar. Mouth open. Eyes like saucers. Chill up the spine. Heart pounding in the throat. Momentary disbelief. We frown and attempt to piece the story together without a script or narrator. Sometimes alone, occasionally with others . . . then boom! “The flash of a mighty surprise” boggles the mind, leaving us somewhere between stunned and dumb with wonder. “Am I dreaming or is a miracle happening?” So it is with surprises.
Read MoreThe Dark Side of Greatness
One of the Caesars? No. Napoleon? No. Alexander the Great? No. Eisenhower? Patton? MacArthur . . . or some earlier military strategist like Grant or Lee or Pershing? No, none of the above. How about Rockne or Lombardi? No. Or Luther? Calvin? Knox? Wesley? Spurgeon? Again, the answer is no.
Read MoreGod Means It for Good
After a lengthy bout with despair, severe depression, and suicide attempts, writer and poet William Cowper (1731–1800) discovered comfort in God’s providence, which led him to write “Shining out of Darkness” . . .
Read MoreProvidence
I’ve been giving a lot of thought these days to the subject of God’s will. While engaged in a study of that issue recently, I came across a term we rarely use or read these days: providence. The root meaning of providence is “foresight . . . to see in advance” or “to provide for.” But those definitions could leave us with too shallow an understanding. Providence contains far more than a passive reference to God’s foreknowledge.
Read MoreGod Alone Knows Our Future
The longer we walk with the Lord, the more we realize that we really don’t know what each new day may bring. A phone call can come in the middle of the night shattering our joy. Suddenly everything changes. It’s amazing what a knock at the door can bring or what the opening of a letter can do.
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