Matthew 6:25–34 My answer to this concern goes like this: Suppose you are in a car race and your enemy who doesn’t want you to finish the race throws mud on your windshield. The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve does not mean that you are going to quit [...]
Matthew 6:25–34 Now I can think of two kinds of disturbed responses to this truth. Let me tell you what they are and then give a biblical response before we go on to the battle against the unbelief of anxiety. 1. “This Is Not Good News!” One response would go like this: This is not good [...]
Matthew 6:25–34 Now today’s text illustrates this with a specific evil condition of heart, namely, anxiety. Stop for a moment and think how many different sinful actions and attitudes come from anxiety. Anxiety about finances can give rise to coveting and greed and hoarding and stealing. Anxiety about succeeding at some task can make you irritable [...]
Matthew 6:25–34 Let me hang a bridge between yesterday’s text and our concern today with the unbelief of anxiety. In Hebrews 3:12 it says, “Take care, brethren, lest their be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, leading you to fall away from the living God.” And verse 14 says, “For we have shared in [...]
June 5,2010 Saturday morning four of us got up at 7 ( or at least three of us did… one person got up at 8:10) to meet outside the port gates at 0830 , with Thomas, our Togolese translator. Thomas took us to his home and then we went to his son’s private school. (Yes, I [...]
5/12/2010 This is a true story. For privacy reasons, names have been left out or changed, and details are essentially correct. The 25 year old female lay on the operating room table, sedated but awake listening to all of the foreign voices talking over her, around her. She had been brought into this cold room, [...]
Hebrews 10:19-25 4. Empowering to Love Make your meeting together with believers a meeting specifically for the empowering to love. Empowering to love. Don’t be unintentional when you get together. Don’t just say, Christian fellowship is good, so we are going to get together and talk. It is good. And talking is wonderful. But the stakes [...]
Hebrews 10:19-25 – Pt. 2 2. Avoiding the Habit of Not Meeting The second point is, don’t get into the habit of not meeting. This is almost the same as point #1, but verse 25 seems to give it a special stress. So I want to too. It says, “Not neglecting to meet together, as is [...]
Hebrews 10:19-25 That’s the second thing to say about belief: it produces fruit in our lives. Belief in the promises of God is not a dead and fruitless thing. What you bank on for happiness controls your life. The last thing to say is just a sentence for now. In order to keep on believing in [...]
You can see this in our text. Right after extolling Abraham for believing the promises of God in verses 19-21, Paul says, “That is why his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” So how did Abraham get justified in God’s sight? Why did God look at this imperfect man and count him as righteous [...]