The deepness and consistency of your repenting will have a direct impact on the liveliness of your faith and the brightness of your confidence. This is not because you repent so well, but because in repenting you know the darkness and trouble of your...
Keep yourselves from idols." The warning isn't given to them because it wasn't a real danger or because there was an off chance someone might fall into idolatry. It was given because this is our root problem on any given day. It is what we, especiall...
its more a trance, jonah said. the whole world is pressing in on me, like a weight on my chest, slowly pushing me down ans down. and there's nothing between me and this weight but my flimsy skin. Its not enough. It won't protect me. It doesn't keep a...
If you can be a good role model for people, well, great. You try and live your sporting life and the rest of your life as well as you can, and if it's something that people admire, well, fantastic. I don't sit at home and think about it too much, tho...
Can you see why I can't stand a lie? People have been lying to me all my life. Even the person I loved the most in the world." Sometimes people lie for good reasons," Jonah said. "To keep you safe, or to avoid breaking your heart, or to make it possi...
Just as ceremonial fasting was a legitimate means for getting God's attention (Mt 6:16-18; Ac 13:2-3; 14:23), the casting of lots was a legitimate means for inviting God to intercede on a matter. (Pr 18:18) It was not expected that God should interve...
You can change direction if you feel like you have missed your way... Decide to do that now! Go back a little more and begin from where you missed it out! If only you are ready to rise again, you can make a right decision in that tight belly of the s...
Explaining temptation by saying “God is testing me” or “Satan is attacking me” positions “me” either as the victim, if I am defeated, or the hero, if I prevail. But confessing that “My heart is desperately wicked” provides no such com...
To quote a famous philosopher revered in my time 'But this is no different from regular life. When have you ever known what's going to happen in the future?'" Wait a minute, Jonah thought. I said that. Back at Westminster, with Katherine. Does that m...
In the absence of a story or foundation that gives hope or meaning, life has become a never-ending quest for pleasure and experience. Instead of being good, people want to feel good.
Prayer is meant to happen everywhere. After all, Daniel prayed in the lion’s den. Jonah prayed in a fish’s stomach. Elijah prayed in the desert. And Jesus prayed on the cross.
The true terror Jonah thought the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die but that we were all born that we were all once little babies like this unknowing and slowly reeling in the world gathering it loop by loop like a ball of str...
I don't care that people thought I was one way for my whole career because now that I am not attached to a team, I can have my own opinion, I can have my own voice. I can link myself to my own thought process rather than a generic message most teams ...
New beginnings always had something special—starting at the bottom and making it to the top produced something magical. When you reach your destination, your goal, that’s when it really hits home. Maybe that’s why I felt the way I did. I knew I...
When God interrupts your life, He is calling you to follow Him in a new way. By breaking into your settled pattern, He is moving you to a new place where you can make fresh discoveries of His grace. Embracing God’s call is never easy, but this is w...
When your heart is gripped by the love of God poured out in the cross, and when you see the extent of that love in the propitiation by which Christ became the sacrifice for your sin, bearing wrath and entering hell for you, and when you are convinced...
You live recklessly when you do not take God's law seriously or respond to the gospel properly. Reckless living can look like laziness and apathy. When you simply aren't motivated and tell yourself that God has forgiven you in Jesus, so you're not go...
Nobody got me out," Nellie replied. "They just let me go. They think I'm a deranged Jonah Wizard fan. Apparently, the hotel's full of them. A couple of idiots actually jumped off the front balcony. Can you picture that?" "In Technicolor," Amy said bi...
The traveler from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible. Then he go...
In serving as a pastor for over thirty years, I have seen some remarkable transformations and I’ve seen some big disappointments. I have two observations. First, where there has been lasting change, the common factor, in every case, is that the Wor...
The Bible is different because it is the Word of God, by which He speaks to me. Disagreeing with the Bible would be disagreeing with God. So when I read the Bible I want to place myself ‘under’ it. I want to receive the Scripture in such a way th...
