When I first came to Christ I was very leery of the idea of sin. For me, sin was something that was used to punish me. I was often told I was a sinner, which was equated to evil, bad, terrible, and holding a one-way ticket to hell. This wasn’t used as a segway into the need for Christ and the mercy and forgiveness He died to give us, it was used as a rod of discipline to keep me in line. The only forgiveness I heard about was being forgiven by obeying the adults in charge of me, and…
Last week I wrote a post about forgiveness, and I would like to follow it up with a post on how to forgive. Learning to forgive can be quite difficult for some people. It can seem as though forgiving someone is excusing every bad thing they have done to you. However, that is not how the Lord sees forgiveness. Jesus came to set us free from oppression and death, and when we hold on to unforgiveness, we are holding on to the very things that strive to keep us in bondage. For I consider that the sufferings of this present…
When I first came to Christ, I was a big time sinner. Who isn’t right? It seems like I probably have committed most of the sins there are – drinking, drugs, promiscuous sex, sexual immorality, witchcraft, divorce, adultery, lying, stealing, swearing, taking the Lord’s name as a swear word, blasphemy, hate and violence. Wow! Is there anything else left outside of murder? I’m not really sure. All I know is it was an absolute miracle that I came to God at all. It all started with walking into a Presbyterian church one Sunday morning, after never really have been to…
“Knowledge is power”. This famous quote from Francis Bacon in 1597, has given many men inspiration over the centuries. When I look around our world today, I can see the influence this saying has had. We truly believe knowledge is power. We believe that we gain the most important things out of life through knowledge. We spend most of our childhood attending schools and then pursue higher education as an adult to advance our knowledge. Our knowledge leads us to higher ways of thinking and understanding the world around us and ourselves. It has birthed great philosophers and teachers into…
Have you ever felt alone? Unloved? Unworthy? I know I have. I have many moments in life when I felt I was not only unloved, but unlovable. I wanted to be loved, but never felt that I could measure up to being good enough to be loved. I wanted desperately to feel approval from my parents, but never did. I wanted to know that I was valuable and important to someone, but no matter how many times my husband told me I was, I could never believe it. I wanted to look in the mirror and see someone beautiful and…
When I was about 16 or 17 I started drinking alcohol. My parents don’t really know this, but I waited one night when they were in bed and sneaked into a little cupboard where they kept hard alcohol. My parents did not really drink alcohol at this time anymore and it was probably years old. I reasoned that if I took just a little from every bottle it would be hard to detect any missing from the half empty containers. I combined them all in one cup. I think there was bourbon, scotch, whiskey and vodka, but it’s hard to…
As a young adult I wanted nothing more than to be free. To make the choices that I felt were right, and to do what felt good. I wanted to define who I was and how I saw the world on my own terms. I had felt oppressed by my parents for so long and the new-found freedom of adulthood was like a breath of fresh air. So who was I to define myself as? I had to get in touch with myself, and the world around me. To figure out what life meant and where I fit in with that.…
Once upon a time there was a young man whose purity was virtuous and true. For no other man in the whole land had made a vow to hold onto his purity until marriage, as he had. All the young women coveted this precious gift he had left, because they had all given up their rights of virtue and the keys to their kingdoms long ago. When they saw such a young man who was so valiant and pure, they wept loudly and mourned openly. For who else would make such a wonderful husband as this man? Who would take…