Acts 1:8 but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. After Jesus rose from His grave, He met with His disciples. He told them to wait in the city until they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. He told them at that time they would receive power. They were to open…
I John 2:20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. The apostle John writes this letter to believers to warn them of deceivers in their midst who he calls anti-christs; ones who professed to be believers but who had gone away from them and the faith. Those false believers said only a select few had on inside track to God through special knowledge. They were called Gnostics. John tells the believers they have a…
Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. Have you ever thought of God exulting over you with love? He comes and lives inside of us—He overcomes all our enemies. He saves us through our troubles. He wants to celebrate what He has done with us. Rest in His victorious joy. His…
Isaiah 41:13 For I am the Lord your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, “Do not fear, I will help you.” Have you ever been faced with a seemingly impossible task? You wonder how this could possibly turn out for the good. As far as you’re concerned you are standing at the bottom of Mt. Everest with the assigned task of climbing to the top in a week. You have no training. No equipment. No possibility…
Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. This scripture not only refers to individuals. It also includes nations. Do you know any person or nation that is a wreck; is crushed or ruptured? Some come to mind immediately. They need more than a band-aid and a couple of aspirin. They need a major overhaul. No amount of human effort is going to bring healing to these wounds. Only Jesus, the All-powerful God, can restore, heal, bind…
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” I never cease to be amazed what you can learn by going back to the original Hebrew language in the Old Testament or the Greek in the New Testament to find out new…
Psalm 91:11 For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. In God’s Little Miracle Book III, I share a story of a woman whose very abusive husband made several attempts to take her life. One day as she swam in their pond near their rural home he waded in after her with the intent to drown her. She cried out to the Lord as she had done many times before. When he…
My attention was directed recently to the account of Jesus calling Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree as he passed through Jerico. 1. He didn’t just say, “You there.” He called Zacchaeus by name. Has Jesus called your name to come to Him? 2. Jesus bid him to come down. Have you left your old way of living; your old habits, wrong paths, evil thoughts, to come walk the right way of Jesus? 3. Jesus invited Himself to dine with…
Recently someone asked me if Jesus was God. “Yes. He’s the third part of the trinity. He’s God with skin on. God with a face.” “I don’t understand that trinity stuff,” she said. Looking down into my lap and prayed the Lord to show me how to answer her. My hands rested there with the verigated yarn I was knitting on three needles. Suddenly, I had the answer. “The trinity is like this piece of knitting. It’s all one piece,…
This past Thanksgiving I had a quiet moment, one-on-one, with my fifth-grade grandson before everyone descended for dinner. He transferred this year from a private Christian school to public. “How do you like your new school?” I asked as I stirred the gravy. “I like some classes, but some of my teachers take the Lord’s name in vain every day.” “Really. That’s strange.” “Some of the kids there have some really wacky ideas. At lunch the other day one girl…