I love 1 Corinthians 1:9. It’s been a favorite verse of mine since I was a teenager. As I was reading in the chapter, earlier this week, verses 4-9 jumped out at me in a way they had not before. They are grouped together. The paragraph ends with verse 9 declaring:…
I was re-reading Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ. I highly recommend it. What I read this morning had to do with Jesus being our righteousness. Murray pointed out that as we begin with Christ and begin to understand righteousness, we think of it as something we have to put on…
Extreme church, exceeding righteousness, the surpassing value of knowing Him. I attended a photography seminar a few years ago and got an idea for promoting senior portraits that I felt communicated an important message to potential customers: “It’s Your Image . . . Don’t Settle.” Your high school senior portrait…
I’m a survivor. I’m a cancer survivor, four and a half years and counting. I’m also a divorce survivor, not counting, but it was a long time ago. I’ve had a variety of jobs, some at which I was successful, some at which I failed, and some that more or…
Trish and I have two beautiful Appaloosa horses. Rocky and Domino are intelligent, strong, and almost trained. It is not a good idea for people with little knowledge of horse training to take on training an untrained horse, much less two. We intended to work with them some when they…
What do you have going for you? What things are in your favor? What can you lay claim to that give you a sense of status or importance? I was born and raised in a Baptist, church-going family. I was a “good kid” – a leader in the church youth…
Another of my friends from high school passed away this week. It’s hard to believe someone so young could be gone. Okay, so we aren’t so young anymore; but still, we aren’t all that old either. Anyway, Diane is with the Lord she loved and served all her life, even…
If our righteousness is to exceed that of the Pharisees, how does that affect the way we “do church?” Or does it? What about ministry and evangelism and discipleship? A friend of mine, J. Guy Muse, wrote an interesting blog recently that got me thinking. Guy’s recent post dealt with…
Have you ever wondered what it means to be more righteous than the Pharisees? Have you ever wondered what a Pharisee is? The Pharisees were a sect of ancient Judaism. The crash course explanation would go something like this. The rising Babylonian empire had conquered Judea and taken most of…
To be happy. It’s something we all want. The United States’ Declaration of Independence asserts that our Creator has endowed us with the right to pursue happiness. One of the first Christian books I ever read, beside the Bible, was Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life. A…
