Make it your regular practice to give your soul a thorough examination to see if there is anything displeasing to God hidden inside you. There are several ways of doing this. As you read the Bible, note anything that displeases God and ask yoursel...

When you reach out to others in ministry, you need to be very careful that you do not end up falling into sin yourself. Jude uses the word “fear.” You need to have a healthy fear lest you fall into the same sins as somebody else you are reaching o...

Those who can see that they’ve been burned know what the fire can do, and they reach out to others in the flames. That takes courage. You can’t do ministry without being burned. There is no pain-free ministry.

There is an old story about an...

If you’re going to be useful in ministry, you need to have a proper understanding of yourself and what God has done for you. Sin has damaged us all, but the Bible makes it clear that sin has done deeper damage to you and to me than staining our li...

If you want to live a healthy Christian life, you need to learn to wait. The obvious question is, What does God want us to do while we are waiting?

The answer is that we are to give ourselves to ministry. God calls us to ministry. There are...

The people who bring menus to your table at a restaurant are called waiters or waitresses. They have no other agenda but to wait on you. They take your order, bring your food, and then make sure everything is okay.

Some people think God exi...

When Jude talks about waiting, the obvious question is, Don’t we already have God’s mercy? Yes. Don’t we already have Jesus Christ? Yes. Don’t we already have eternal life? Yes!

If we’ve already received these things, why does Jude tell us ...

Patience is what you need when things have not worked out as you hoped. Somewhere deep within every heart there is a dream of life as we want it to be. That dream is placed in your heart by God. The word “wait” reminds us that the dream will never...

Once you see how important the theme of waiting is in the Bible, you’ll have new motivation to exercise this neglected area of the Christian life. Here are five passages on waiting:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. (Ps. ...

In one of Garrison Keillor’s books about Lake Wobegon he describes a rather awkward teenager growing up in a small town. The lad gives a speech at his high school graduation, and afterwards somebody comes up to him and says, “Nice speech!” But he ...

Some time ago, a minister from England went to India to deliver a series of evangelistic messages. When he arrived, there were posters hanging all over town advertising the evening meetings at which he would be speaking.

The posters were su...

The Bible talks about the love of God in a number of ways:

Providential love is God’s kindness to His enemies as well as His friends. God’s enemies will come under His judgement, but right now they receive good gifts from His hand. Why do g...

Another way to pray in the Spirit is by using the Lord’s Prayer (Mat. 6:9-13). Martin Luther structured his entire prayer life around the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (6:9) Luther prayed that ...

The Bible contains some marvellous prayers that were breathed out by the Spirit of God. You will find many of them in the book of Psalms.

The whole Bible was written as men were carried along by the Holy Spirit and as you fill your mind wit...

Imagine a teenage computer geek writing software in his basement: “How can I get this in the hands of the people at Microsoft?” He doesn’t know anyone there, and he has no idea how to introduce his ideas to them. Who knows how many requests they r...

Once you’ve grasped that there’s one God, and that He’s not whoever you want Him to be, the next question is “How do you come to Him?” That depends on what you want to receive.

The Bible uses the picture of a throne to help us understand. T...

Imagine meeting with your minister at church. He places a number of envelopes in front of you and says, “We can talk about anything you want. But here are some envelopes with questions written on them. Go ahead and pick one.”

The topics ran...

Faith grows by looking at Jesus. Faith becomes strong as you fill your mind and soul with how trustworthy He is.

Imagine yourself as a younger child, attending a professional sporting event with your family. Your parents get tickets about t...

Faith is like a muscle. It grows strong when it is used. If you want to develop a particular muscle, you pull or push against a weight. Faith grows when it has to push against a great burden.

That’s what happens when God allows trials in yo...

Jude is talking about the same faith here that he mentions in verse 3: “The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” You can build up your faith by affirming what you believe. That’s why Christians throughout the centuries have recite...

There will be times when you seem to be making little progress, and you wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Am I a Christian at all?” Jude says, “You need to build up your faith.” How do you do that?

Satan loves to point out how puny, pathetic, ...

Micah preached this message to all the people of Israel. The sad fact is that to the vast majority of people, what Micah said didn't make the slightest difference. Life went on exactly the same as it had before. Another day, another pound (or shek...

If hurling your iniquities into the depths of the sea refers to God’s deliverance from past sins, then treading your sins underfoot must refer to temptations that still lie ahead of you.

Here you are going out into another week, and Satan h...

This is a marvellous picture: God hurling your iniquities into the depths of the sea. A pastor once said: “When God throws your sins into the depths of the sea, He puts up a big sign that says. No fishing!” When God forgives. He takes the past wit...

It's hard to think of any issue that causes more difficulty in the minds and hearts of so many people than the anger of God.

We tend to suppress the idea of God’s anger or deny it. You’ve likely heard someone say, “I grew up believing in an...

All of our experience indicates that we seem more under God’s judgement than His blessing. Our culture is falling apart. Families are breaking up. God is hiding His face from us. We have sinned and we are under the wrath of God.

Where do yo...

God may seem hidden to us, but He is never absent. He may seem far away, but He is always at work. Micah knows God is near, and that is why He watches and waits. Fishermen know about this. You don't see any fish, but you know they’re there, so you...

All Micah can say is that things will be different in the future, but as he writes, he has no compelling answer to offer the cynic who says, “Where is your God?” Micah is surrounded by trouble and God is nowhere to be found. He doesn’t know where ...