“My grace is sufficient for you, for My  strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV) This world does not like weakness.  You will never find even a devout Christian praying, “Lord, make me weak.” We tend to shun both weakness and the people who exhibit it.  The daily twin prayer  request  many of us make  is for “health and strength,”  the two ideas fitting together neatly  into our desire for  the good life. “Strong” and “strength” occur a lot in our prayers. Check on yourself for a week and see how true this is. Weakness is not part of the vocabulary of the work-a-day world either. It’s…

“Wait  on the Lord, Be of good courage And He shall strengthen your heart: Wait, I say, on the Lord!” Psalm 27;14 (NKJV) One reason we enjoy reading the psalms  is that they’re poetry. The New King James Version of Psalm 27  is written in verse form, emphasizing its poetic nature. However, our focus verse is far  more than lovely poetry; it lets us know  that waiting on God is important. Waiting. It’s not  something  we’re good at,  especially when we think we have an urgent need that’s not getting the attention we believe it deserves. There are endless numbers of times and places  where  our ability to wait gets…

“He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the  word of God and obey it.’ ” (Luke 11:28  (NIV) The crowds that followed Jesus were awed by His teachings as He told them things they had never heard before from their religious leaders. I know the feeling of getting a different perspective from  a gifted speaker. It’s easy to become emotionally stirred. One woman in the crowd listening to Jesus speak got so carried  away that she yelled out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you!”  (verse 27). In this  left-handed compliment,  the woman was saying how wonderful Jesus was by praising His mother.  Jesus took…

“Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires  of your heart.” Psalm 37:4  (NKJV) Have you ever promised to give someone their heart’s desire? I have never done  it, being totally incapable of  delivering on something like that.  But I  did  view  Psalm 37:4  as a promise to provide the good things I wanted, and  for a long time it was my favorite Bible verse; however,  over time I somehow began to think that I was being too materialistic,  and  so edged away from that text and chose as my favorite, one that made me  feel less greedy. It’s helpful to know that it wasn’t…

“So the Lord said,  If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you.”  Luke 17:6 (NKJV) What we have here  is  Jesus’  response  to His disciples who’d  said to Him, “Increase our faith” (verse 5).  That is a great request, isn’t it?  As usual, Jesus gave an unexpected answer.  He chose to emphasize a little thing, the tiny mustard-seed faith that can be so dynamic that it  produces  something big.  The disciples  may have been feeling inadequate when they asked Jesus to increase their faith.  Often we,…

“Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me.” John 15:4 People were amazed when they listened to Jesus.   He was the kind of teacher that got everybody’s attention. Even the officers who were sent by the chief priests to spy on Him went back to them and reported that they had never heard anyone  speak “like this Man” (John 7:40).  Well, what did He do that was so different?  He  made His hearers identify with His teaching by using  metaphors, , analogies,  and parables and made references to nature,…

“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”  Philippians 3:10 (NKJV) Christians  around the world celebrated Resurrection Day with joy. For the majority among us, this joy wasn’t just a holiday spirit. It was  the joy of realizing what  Jesus Christ has accomplishied for us, that in His resurrection we have the gift of eternal life. That is indeed something to be joyful about. As a part of the spirit of the special day, our church had peace lilies in all the windows–a lovely sight and a meaningful symbol   of Jesus the Prince of Peace.  It’s very likely that  those lilies will not be there next Sabbath;…

 “Now as they came out,  they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear the cross.” Matthew27:32 (NKJV) I am sharing the piece below, taken from my unpublished collection of dramatic monologues, because it relates to the story of Jesus’ final days and fits into this special season of remembrance. Here an imaginary eyewitness to Jesus’ suffering on Good Friday tells  what he saw.   With something big like a crucifixion happening, I had to be there. I’d followed the trial, witnssed the beatings—really brutal. I felt sorry for jesus of Nazarath, sorry, too, that I couldn’t help Him. He was a good Man, a…

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday  and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8 (NKJV) Most of the prepared foods we buy have  a use-by date, and we’re usually careful to check for it because we want to know that the food is edible and will not make us sick.  Over-the-counter medicines also carry an expiration date, and we look for it, but sometimes we’re not as diligent as we should be in getting rid of the old items and buying new ones.  In our family, we seldom have headaches, but a few weeks ago, I was in a pinch to find a headache remedy for my son and found that I…

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve  and to give His life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 (NKJV) “I am somebody!” Perhaps you’re old enough to remember hearing  those words that  became the motto for countless thousands of students in  elementary and secondary schools in the seventies. They chanted them enthusiastically when guest speakers tossed them out in assemblies.  How much good came from this concentrated dose of  self-esteem, I don’t know, but  the self-worth that was promoted then is still the watchword of  people in society today, and the majority of them would rather be served than serve. But listen…