In the middle of Hebrews 11:16 we read “God is not ashamed to be called their God.” That grabs my attention! Who is God talking about? I don’t want God to be ashamed of me and I’m sure you don’t either! Hebrews 11 is the great “Faith Chapter” of the Bible, with many stories of…
In our last episode we talked about suffering for doing good. Today we want to build on that and wrestle with the reality that suffering can enable us to connect with others. Think about the simplicity of these two statements: Our sin caused a separation, a disconnect with God Himself. Jesus suffered to restore that…
Hi Friends! Thanks for taking a minute to open this and read it. It’s been several months since I sent one out. Let’s jump in. Mark 8:34 reminds us that Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” What makes this challenge hard is…
In Proverbs it says, “He who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment.” Most of us would immediately say, “I don’t isolate myself, I’m good.” Today, I want you and me to wrestle with the fact that wise judgment leads us in the complete opposite direction. That direction is death…
In Job 38:22 God asks Job, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?” As most of you know, we live in Salt Lake City, which is on the eastern edge of the Great Basin Desert. This past Friday, April 4th, I went hiking in Little Cottonwood Canyon, where our desert meets the mountains. I…
In 1 Peter 4:8 we read these words, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins’.” Are you grateful that love has covered your sins? I sure am! Many times, the world and even God’s people dig up sinful things to shame others. Instead of…
Today we continue to look at our concept of God. The question we want to address is, “Do I really believe God is for me?” A lot of us would immediately say, “Yes!” However, any time we yield to sin we are actually saying, “God must be against me because I am acting on the…
I hope you are having a good week! Even as I write that I am aware that our concept of God drastically affects our perception of our situation. When life’s circumstances are hard; when our finances don’t seem to quite be enough; when we and others are hurting we need to acknowledge those facts. However,…
All of us have resisted pressure to conform. Even amongst followers of Jesus, people tell us we should do things for many reasons. Have you ever said, “But that’s not me. I’m not like that.” There are many times we should resist pressure to conform. And when we are told we “should” do something it…
Today we continue our series where we are looking at the question, “Who is God?” The answer to this question has endless ramifications. We should not approach it as if we are looking to define God so we can have a nice, neat, end all description of Him. That won’t happen! Any phrase we come…
