All who work with babies and bottles, toddlers and high chairs, building blocks and toy boxes enjoy one of the special delights life offers. Yet with all the thrills, there are also the threats unique to newborns. Being so tiny and dependent, their little lives often hang perilously close to danger and death. What is true of infant humans is equally true of infant believers in God's family.
You may not have thought about it before, but Christians have a lot more in common with soldiers than we might think.
There is one common analogy used throughout the New Testament regarding the local church. It is not a business, farm, team, school, or hospital, though those word pictures are frequently used by us to convey various dimensions of congregational life. The most often used analogy is that of a family. God is our Father; we are called His offspring—sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, even fellow heirs.
Those who successfully wage war with silent heroism under relentless secular pressure—ah, they are the saints who know what it means to be melted.
Jesus was the master teacher. Against relentless and hostile opposition, and in spite of many who followed Him for all the wrong reasons, He spoke with wisdom and taught with skill. Among the methods He preferred to use, the parable was one of His favourites. By placing a familiar and simple word picture before His audience, Jesus was able to draw out profound analogies that have intrigued even the brightest minds for centuries.
This article is designed to create a better understanding of how to tame the gossip habit. For the next 30 days read the questions and allow them to spark deeper personal reflection and life change.
When Jesus gave His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) He broadcast to a multitude. When He was on His way through Jericho (Luke 19) He encountered a crowd before finding Zacchaeus in a tree and proceeded to minister in his home. When Jesus met the woman at the well (John 4) He cared for her one-on-one. Jesus used different methods to minister effectively to different needs.
We all agree—life is difficult. Without warning, tragedy strikes and cuts our legs out from under us. It’s bad enough when such pain comes as the result of our wrongdoing. But how do we bear the pain of unjust suffering?
Jesus’ resurrection is God’s corrective lens. Like reading glasses, it helps us clearly see the truth about things that matter most.
When we encounter trials we tend to see them in a negative way. But Christians have the opportunity to view them in the biblical frame of God’s redemptive work.
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