CHRIST our PEACE: “He is our peace” (Eph 2:14). Peace (Gk, eirene) is the “tranquil state of the soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its lot” (W.E. Vine). True peace in the believer is stated to be the result of justification (Rom 5:1) and reconciliation […]
“You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). Job is quoting Jehovah here (see 38:2). It’s easy to overestimate what we can handle, and thus our frustration with God when He withholds […]
Stirred by Bunyan’s “Visions of Heaven and Hell,” drunkard miner Billy Bray sought the Lord. For days in soul trouble, finally, he writes: “I said to the Lord, ‘Thou hast said, They that ask shall receive…and I have faith to believe it.’ In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express […]
“But exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13). What day is it that we should exhort one another—or comfort, encourage, witness, serve, praise and pray? Why, the day we call “Today,” of course, because it’s the only day we ever […]
There are times to flee (for example, 2 Tim 2:22), but at other times God calls us to stand our ground. Some suggest that the title for Psalms 9 and 10, Muth-labben, should be translated as “Death of a Champion” and describes the long defiance and eventual defeat of Goliath and the Philistines. If that’s the […]
CHRIST the BRIGHT and MORNING STAR (Rev 22:16). Our Lord here presents Himself as the herald of His own dawning. All the world shall see the Lord arise as the Sun of Righteousness, but only those looking for Him will see His appearing as the Morning Star. John Fletcher of Madeley (1729–1785), close friend of […]
“I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me” (Ps 119:19). Excuse the irony, but nothing could be stranger! A person always on earth but “born from above.” A heavenly citizen living as a stranger in this world. A possessor of life that is to be lived “more abundantly,” yet […]
William MacDonald writes: We teach our children to accumulate; Christ calls them to forsake all (Lk 14:33). We teach them that it is not respectable to be poor: Jesus said, “Blessed be ye poor” (Lk 6:20). We tell them to stay home and make good; the Lord tells them to “go…into all the world and […]
“We dare not…compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Cor 10:12). The Lord never measures us against others; He assesses us by the measure of our growth into the person He designed us to be—and that journey will, by His […]