If God were to ask you a question and the answer to that question would determine your destiny, what would it be? He asked that of Solomon. “… the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, ‘Ask what you wish Me to give to you’” (1 Kings 3:5). We need to think before we answer; …
Faith in the Making
Faith … it is a word that has been misunderstood, misused, diluted and generalized. Faith has become synonymous to a person’s religious preference. In coming to grips with what is most important, let’s let faith not only be defined, but let’s press on until we let faith define us. “As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, …
Faith and Works
How do we get the church out of the church and into the community where God wants it to be? “Dear brothers and sisters, what’s the use of saying you have faith if you don’t prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can’t save anyone” (James 2:14). Sideliners When I was younger, I was a sideliner. I wasn’t …
Hidden in Plain Sight
“F2F.” Do you know what that means? “Face to face.” There is a new wave of social networking that can cause us to become people who hide in plain sight. In this socially connected world, people are still not connected. Divorce rates are the same. Families are still breaking apart. Greed in America is at its highest peak and everyone …
Relationships That Delight God
God delights to carry out His will through His children. God is looking for children who are in healthy relationship with Him through which He can carry out His will. God could do it all, but He wants to run it through us because He delights in carrying out His will through His children when they have a good relationship …
The Gift of Friendship
We live in a world that’s crowded and busy, but lonely. We’re desperate for friends and there’s no better example than Jesus Himself who said, “No longer do I call you slaves … but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). The more we become like Him, the more we become someone who others may call “friend,” because the best …
How to Grow in the Stretch
Sometimes, God wants to build our faith like building muscles so God will stretch our faith. Nobody likes to be stretched because there is a tug-of-war of what we should do and what we should not do. We do not like to be stretched because it forces us to make a decision. We have to understand that if God is …
Faith at Work
As we develop a faith for our everyday lives, we especially want to extend that to our workplace — where we spend so much time and have such consistent contact with others. We may not realize it, but our employers, co-workers and customers can either be influenced, impacted by, imposed upon or annoyed by our faith. We may be the …
The Truth About Money
The word “greed” is simply defined as keeping everything we get. When greed begins to obsess or control us, there is no flow through. Even though we do not use certain things, we become greedy and begin to accumulate them because the accumulation is an end in itself. Then our value, our identity and everything is wrapped up in possessions …
Encourage Yourself
After a war, David came back to his hometown, only to discover it had been burnt to the ground. The women and the children were captured and destined for slavery. The men, seeing their families gone, wept and wept and wept. No one was there to encourage David. There will be times like that in your life when there will be …