A poetic prayer based on Luke 11
Lord,
Teach us to pray,
“God’s kingdom come,
Your will be done,”
for forgiveness for us to extend to others.
Teach us to pray,
to keep asking,
to not give up
until You answer.
Teach us to pray,
to look for open doors,
to knock them down if need be,
to get to Your heart.
Teach us to pray for what we need,
for what we want,
for what You want to give us.
Because You want to give us more than we could ever ask.
Teach us to pray for unity,
unity with You and with others. …
A nonfiction book review
My daughter’s confession
Not long ago, my younger daughter confessed to me that she felt lonely. How do you help someone else who feels that way? What do you do when you’re feeling lonely yourself? What is the best loneliness solution?
This is something Pastor Jack Eason, husband of bestselling fiction author Lynette Eason, explores in The Loneliness Solution. When presented with the opportunity to review this book, I was immediately drawn to the title because of my daughter’s recent confession.
Would I find anything inside these pages I could use to help her?
I didn’t really know what to expect from ‘The Loneliness Solution’
When I first opened the package for this book and saw it, I fell in love with its cover. And, interestingly, I had just received the butterfly bookmark pictured below that matches the lettering on the cover perfectly. …
A movie review
Should I really be reviewing this movie?
Most people don’t believe that the rapture will occur. What if there was evidence to prove that it will? — Before the Wrath
These are the words and the thought that this movie, Before the Wrath, begins with.
When I was presented with the opportunity to review this movie, I wondered if I should take it. End times prophecy has never been all that interesting to me. It’s never been that important to me, given that I know Jesus is coming back for me before the end (I am a pre-tribulation rapture believer).
What happens after that is pretty much irrelevant to me. …
God gave me a new perspective on worship
When the worship music begins to play during the church service, what do you expect? Blessing? Fun? Excitement? Connection?
What about conviction?
Do you ever expect to be convicted during worship?
I never did … until it happened to me.
Let me give you the back story
One Saturday afternoon, I had a backache. And when I say backache, I mean excruciating pain every time I tried to bend over or do anything.
The same Saturday afternoon, my husband decided he was going fishing, leaving me at home alone, in pain, with the responsibility of taking care of our two girls. And when he got done fishing, he still had two hours’ worth of work to do to clean the church we used to be members of. …
A lot of us miss it, as well
It pays to pay attention in church
One Sunday morning, the pastor was giving a sermon on a very familiar story, that of The Rich Young Ruler.
And someone [Luke 18:18 calls him a ruler] came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” …
Our perceptions don’t always reflect reality
I don’t remember when, exactly, the conversation took place — sometime in the late ’80s or early ’90s. I don’t really remember what the conversation was actually about.
But I remember my granddaddy saying something about a “colored boy” who worked with him in a gas station thirty years earlier.
My grandmother gasped, horrified, “Edward!”
Grandaddy looked at her, looked down at the floor for a moment, and then looked back up at me. “Sorry. Black man.”
And I remember wondering, at the time, whether Granddaddy was a racist because he’d used the “c” word. At least it wasn’t the “n” word, I rationalized. …
My thoughts on the news and a personal fallen hero story
A shocking Facebook post
On the first day of October 2020, one of my Facebook friends posted a link to an article she’d just read. One that had shocked and angered her.
I have to admit to being a little confused by the headline at first. Surely the sexual misconduct hadn’t been committed by Ravi Zacharias himself. They had to be investigating somebody else, for some other reason.
But no. The charges actually were against him.
Three women came forward months after his death and complained that he had sexually harassed them. I’m not going to go into detail here. …
A quick study of some verses from the Gospel of John
Who is Jesus? Do you know?
These days, there’s a lot of confusion about this man who walked the earth two thousand years ago.
Wikipedia gives this description of Him in the first paragraph of their entry for “Jesus”:
Jesus (c. 4 BC — c. AD 30 / 33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world’s largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.
I wouldn’t say, like Wikipedia did, that “most” Christians believe this. I would say all Christians do. …
In the Old and New Testaments
As I read through the Bible 16 chapters per day, one word keeps popping out at me over and over again — chesed (חֶסֶד). It’s a difficult word to translate. Most Bible translations render it as “loving-kindness,” “mercy,” “steadfast love,” and sometimes “loyalty.”
One of the most detailed descriptions comes from Norman H. Snaith:
Loving-Kindness. …The theological importance of the word chesed is that it stands more than any other word for the attitude which both parties to a covenant ought to maintain towards each other. Sir George Adam Smith suggested the rendering “leal-love” … it combines the twin ideas of love and loyalty, both of which are essential. …
Pride rears its ugly head in many different ways
An ancient parable
In Matthew 20:1–16, Jesus tells a story about five groups of vineyard workers and the wages they were all paid. The vineyard owner is God. The workers are all those who will receive His gift of salvation through faith. The twist to the story, of course, is that they all get paid the same “wages,” no matter how long they worked in the vineyard.
We can think of the early workers as those who came to Jesus when they were children, like me … although I ran away from the vineyard for a little while when I was a teenager/young adult. The third-hour laborers are those who turned to him as teenagers. The sixth-hour laborers are those who came to Him in young adulthood. The ninth-hour laborers started living for Him when they were middle-aged. …
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