The human heart is full of eternal hopes. Many people don’t recognize them for what they are—longings for the Kingdom of Heaven and anticipation of living with God and his people forever—but
Category: Forgiveness
Our Greatest Need is God’s Greatest Gift
There Is More Grace in God than Sin in You Our greatest need and God’s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins. And to receive it, we have only to ask and pass it on. But to ask for it, we must first admit that we need it. Instinctively, we wriggle. We want […]
Ashes to Ashes
Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, was the beginning of a season called Lent. Lent is when the Church gets ready for Easte. This excerpt on Lent was originally posted on Read the Arc. The first year I attended a school where Gentiles were the overwhelming majority, I noticed a classmate with a strange smudge of black in […]
Learning to Let Go of Hurtful Words.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Nonsense, right?! Words do hold the power to knock us over, to derail our minds, to sit and simmer within us for a very long time. Words can cause us to be angry and to react in a way we might not […]
You Are Not Defined by Your Failure: How to Begin Letting Go and Moving On.
To fail is to fall short, to be perceived as weak, to break down, to fall, to not reach your purpose, to lack success. No wonder we are all so afraid of failure! When it comes to failure, we must decide whose rules we are playing by. Would you rather be a success in business […]
Forgiveness Is Hard, but a Hard Heart Is Worse.
The Christian life is all about forgiveness. It begins with receiving God’s forgiveness through faith in Jesus and his death on the cross; it continues as we then live in that forgiveness, receiving it daily from our heavenly Father and sharing it freely with others. We are called to forgive others; and if we do […]
Finding Forgiveness When it Seems Impossible
Kim Phuc Phan Thi may not be a name that you have heard of, but she is almost certainly someone you have seen and felt deeply for. Kim is the face of the Vietnam of War that we all know; she is the terrified, burned little girl running from a napalm attack, captured in the […]
How Can I Stop Sinning?
Excerpt from Respectable Sins, Chapter 6; Directions For Dealing With Sins. Author Jerry Bridges. The apostle Paul wrote that we are to “put to death” the various expressions of sin in our lives (see Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). This includes not only obvious sins we want to avoid but also the more subtle ones we […]