Ephesians 2:10 tells us “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for Good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That word “workmanship” in the original Greek is “poiema.” That’s the word that our word poem comes from. We have been carefully crafted as a poet crafts a poem to carry a message. What message are you carrying?
God has a plan for every day of our lives. He tells us in Psalm 139:16b, “. . .in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” When we pray, “Give us our daily bread,” we are asking for the tools, the gifts, the wisdom, to accomplish the tasks He has set aside for this new day. Every morning is a new adventure; a new discovering…
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…
We are in the season of Thanksgiving—we are reminded to be grateful for the good and the bad. Sometimes it’s hard for us to see God’s good in a situation but that’s because we’re in the midst of it. We can’t see the situation from His perspective. We don’t know the good He is working out through these situations. It’s times like these that people think God has abandoned us, that He doesn’t care, that He’s forgotten our name. Nothing…
Often I hear people doubt the authenticity of the Bible. They don’t understand the role of the Scribe in Biblical times. These men spent long hours every day copying every jot and tittle of every word of scripture on to new scrolls. When they finished, they proof-read each line of each column. If there was one mistake in their new copy, they took a knife and sliced the new copy to pieces because it was flawed. To prove the high…
Have you ever felt the Lord has asked you to do something you don’t feel you’re capable of? Scary, isn’t it? One of the first times I went to pray for someone I was scared to death. What would I say? What would I pray? What if the person wasn’t healed? What if I blew it? These questions ran though my head as I drove to the place to pray for the person. The Lord spoke to my heart. It…
In I Kings, chapter 18, King Ahab, a worshiper of God had married a woman who worshiped in a fertility cult who sacrificed their babies to Baal. Elijah, a prophet in Israel, told king Ahab to gather the 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah in order to have a “come to meeting” so to speak. The Israelites, led by their king, worshiped Almighty God. But they also mixed in a little hanky-panky with the temple prostitutes…
I recently spoke with a young woman whose husband had a serious illness. He sought out a well-known specialist who told him he could be a candidate to participate in a blind study of a new medication that could possibly hold a cure. There would be no charge for the participation in the study which normally would be extremely expensive. All experiments conducted on animals so far had proved successful. The husband wanted to do the trial, but his wife…