God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. The answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do’s and don’ts-it’s falling in love with God.
Find all of your security and worth in being a child of God, a member of Christ’s body.
Jesus came humbly as a servant, but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves. He commands everything from His followers.
Many pastors expect their members to sit under their teachings till they die rather than training them to leave and shepherd others. Paul was clear that church leaders are to equip the saints for work. Hugh Halter sees this as a trap we build for ourselves: “Many vocational ministers are stuck doing the work of ministry because they take a paycheck from consumer Christians who fail to see the full scope of their calling.”1.
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
This is why self-deprecation is as wicked as slandering God’s Church.
Do you love this God who is everything, or do you just love everything He gives you? Do you really know and believe that God loves you, individually and personally and intimately?
In our impatient culture, we want to experience biblical awe without biblical devotion.
I imagined God looking down on the earth and seeing people on one side of the planet gathering expectantly whenever prayer was happening. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, people show up only for the most talented people and the “atmosphere.” It’s embarrassing.
Nowhere in Scripture do I see a “balanced life with a little bit of God added in” as an ideal for us to emulate. Yet when I look at our churches, this is exactly what I see: a lot of people who have added Jesus to their lives.
It is the Holy Spirit who keeps us from this path and gives us confidence so we can enjoy intimacy with our Creator. Though I do not believe God gives us His Spirit solely for our personal benefit, it is undeniable that one of the greatest aspects of being in relationship with the Holy Spirit is the intimacy, security, and encouragement He brings us. It is then we can serve God as a beloved child rather than a stressed-out, guilt-ridden slave.
Many want to change the Church, but it is often motivated by personal preference rather than biblical conviction.
You should really spend the rest of your life and the rest of your marriage trying to live more humbly and more sacrificially with respect to the people around you.
If we really want to love our neighbors as ourselves, then it makes sense that we spend at least as much on them as we do on ourselves.
Stories of people who died after living godly lives are stories with happy endings.
God spoke, and the world came into existence. God spoke, and the world was demolished by a flood. One day, God will speak the only verdict that matters as He judges every person. This is the God who knows you, even now. This is the God who is watching you as you read.
The Bible compels us to join God in what He is doing in and around us. Studying the Bible is important, but the goal is never knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
The most terrifying images of hell occur, as we have seen, in the book of Revelation. But let’s remember the context in which John writes this book. This isn’t an evangelistic tract written for unbelievers – the hell passages here weren’t designed to make converts and scare people into the kingdom. They were designed to warn believers to keep the faith in the midst of adversity.
But God is not a coercive God. And though He desires for His children to know peace and love and to have wisdom, I have noticed that often He waits for us to ask.
For those of us who nurture a win-at-any-cost mentality, this verse should shake us to the core. Only a fool would sacrifice this much for any victory. Let this sink into your brain: God actively fights against the proud person. The pride required to win your argument and defeat your “enemy” provides you with a new opponent: God.
The goal of a good pastor is to raise up good pastors.