Visit the locker room before any team sporting event, and you’re likely to hear the coach give some sort of speech intending to encourage the players, even rile them up so they are suitably psyched to face the opposing team on the field of play. The coach has trained them for this moment, but now the training is set aside. Now, the coach can only help dispel any doubts they hold in their minds, remind them of their training, and push them toward excellence.
Continue ReadingJesus never tells us that if we follow God with all that we are that we will be blessed in this life and never suffer illness, poverty, persecution, loneliness, or other symptoms of the brokenness of our world. In fact, Paul tells Timothy that, “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).
Continue ReadingOften this verse translates the phrase “those who work for peace” as the more concise “peacemakers.” While this term has its benefits, it can also be misunderstood to mean something that Jesus did not intend. In English, we tend to equate the idea of being a peacemaker with that of making peace, but they are not altogether the same thing.
Continue ReadingFor this Sabbath day of rest, rather than dig into more Scripture, allow the Holy Spirit to remind you of what God spoke into your soul this past week. Reread the passages for this week and allow the words to penetrate into the deepest parts of you.
Continue ReadingTo a first-century Jewish audience, this announcement regarding the pure of heart would likely bring to mind the Pharisaical obsession with external, ritualistic purification. As illustrated in the parable of the good Samaritan, the religious elite were the kind of people who were reticent to provide assistance if it caused them to be impure in the eyes of the law.
Continue ReadingGrouped together, Matthew 5:5–7 serve as a callback to another passage. Jesus – in his subtle manner that screams loudly to any who have ears to hear it – is reminding his audience of Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (NIV).
Continue ReadingIn 2013, Landon Jones woke up with a bacterial infection of his left lung. Even though his doctor was able to take care of the infection, Landon suffered from an ongoing side effect that is quite unusual: he could no longer feel hungry or thirsty.
Continue ReadingThe root of the word humble comes from the Latin word humus, meaning “earth.” It is incredibly fitting, then, that Jesus connects humility with the inheritance of the earth. It is this very inheritance that we read about in Revelation 21 and 22, where John writes about the old heaven and earth being replaced by a new heaven and a new earth populated with God’s people.
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