Can you imagine the inward strength and the courageous faith that it took for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s 90-foot gold statue when every other person around them was bowing down?  Go even further. Can you imagine the additional inward strength and the extra courageous faith they had as they stood before the king and he threatened…

In Hebrews 4, God tells us in simple terms the difference between those who enter His rest and those who “come short of it.”  The Hebrews writer was pleading with his readers not to follow the example of the Israelites, who failed to enter the rest available to them in the Promised Land. “For indeed the gospel was preached to us as…

The United States Post Office never ceases to amaze me.  We deal with them frequently for our bulk mailings, and it seems like there is always something that’s not exactly right.  The rules they have are so rigid and confusing—trying to keep up with 3-digit vs. 5-digit, letters vs. flats, rubberbands vs. no rubberbands, etc., etc.  Then, if it wasn’t rigid and…

Read the priestly benediction in Numbers 6:22-27 and apply it to us today. The Lord bless you and keep you! God is the source of all blessings (cf. Jas. 1:17), including all the material blessings that we enjoy in this life!  But His blessings go beyond “things”; He guards us and protects us, as a loving Father for His children.  Amazing! The…

Matthew tells us that Joseph found out that Mary was “with child” and “was minded to put her away,” for he knew the Child was not his.  Then, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and reassured him, telling him to take Mary as his wife, for the Child was “of the Holy Spirit.”  So Joseph “did as…

While preaching in a tent meeting in La Romain, Trinidad a few years back, there was a song that we sang almost every night.  It is one of those songs that easily gets stuck in your head—partly because of the tune and partly because of the words.  It was written almost 100 years ago, and the longing of that song writer has…

There are some thoughts and behaviors that we control pretty well until we are put into certain situations or when certain circumstances befall us (or even when we steer circumstances in a particular direction).  For example, we may not curse when certain people are around us.  We may only smoke a cigarette when we are under a lot of stress.  We may…

Three times in the NKJV New Testament, the adverb “earnestly” is tied with the practice of prayer.  In Luke 22:44, Jesus was praying in Gethsemane, and Luke recorded that “being in agony, He prayed more earnestly.”  The word is used to describe Elijah’s devotion in prayer in James 5:17—“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that…