While Laughing, Keep Your Balance!
Those who try to follow Jesus’ example, without His strength, find their lives to be hypocritical and frustrating. What is needed in following Christ is balance.
So many people try to quench their spiritual thirst by physical means: family…friends…job…possessions. Yet none of these earthly things can meet their heavenly need, as Augustine famously prayed centuries ago: “Our heart is restless until it rests in You” (Confessions 1.1).
To many people who seek something more from life, God seems remote, unreachable, silent. Yet others have overcome the obstacles of man-made religion to find true meaning through a personal relationship with the eternal God. What does that mean? How can we begin a relationship with God? How can we lead others to truly know Him?
The answer is Jesus Christ, who freely gives living water to all who thirst.
Those who try to follow Jesus’ example, without His strength, find their lives to be hypocritical and frustrating. What is needed in following Christ is balance.
There's only one place in the Bible where Jesus Himself described what it means to be Christlike.
In God’s Hands on Human Clay, Chuck Swindoll explains the treasured truth that most Christians overlook as the unknown future approaches: God is sovereign. Even though the future remains unclear, we can be certain nothing touches our lives unless it has first flowed through the “moulding” fingers of our loving God.
Why don’t we experience more victory in the Christian life? We have neglected the spiritual disciplines and opted for comfort and mediocrity. So now what do we do to find victory?
In his immortal work on the martyrs done in the 16th century, John Fox listed some of the epitaphs that appeared in the catacombs beneath Rome. Fox found other epitaphs on non-Christian graves. The difference is remarkable! So what accounts for the difference in these inscriptions? One word—resurrection!
In Ecclesiastes 9:11-18, each verse is a maxim, loosely connected to the next, comprising a whole chapter of contrasts: wisdom versus folly.