There are days when I need to be “stopped in my tracks” by God. Days when I need to inhale his love and grace so deeply that the borders of my soul are invaded. Days when I need a PROMISE to hang onto through life’s stubborn slipstream and agonizing anguish. Today is one of those days for me, and my prayer is that God’s PERSONAL promise to ME will be loaded into your life now so it’s ready for the...

Every part of our faith is anchored to Jesus and what he did for us on the Cross. To what he does for us in this life through his love and grace. To all of his PROMISES that ring loudly throughout the Bible. And since we are drilling down into those PROMISES this month, I want to illuminate what I see as the ANCHOR PROMISE (Romans 8:32) that undergirds all others. Doing that will get us moving toward...

Welcome to July and a new theme for the month: “KNOWING WHAT GOD PROMISES.” Studying this topic has made an incredibly strong impact on my faith and continues to animate my walk with Jesus. Like the previous themes we’ve covered so far this year—Release Control; Reject the World; Recognize our Inadequacy; Believe with a CAPITAL B; Doing over Being; and Spiritual Maturity–this one has the “CHANGE-YOUR-LIFE”...

Here we are at the final gate of our month-long trek toward understanding God’s IMPERATIVE for spiritual growth. We’ve noted the critical importance of God’s PRUNING in our level of spiritual maturity and how we can view it as a GIFT that draws us closer to Christ. An appropriate end to that start is considering the role of our CIRCUMSTANCES in the spiritual growth process.    Early in my...

We know that God’s PRUNING is an imperative in our life-long, never-ending journey toward SPIRITUAL MATURITY. But considering it a GIFT is a bit much, don’t you think?    That’s exactly what I thought early in my faith walk when the goal was to avoid God’s pruning at any cost or, if that didn’t work, endure it quickly with the least amount of pain.    But that all changed when...

This truth makes every believer cringe, at least a little: God’s PRUNING is an imperative in our life-long, never-ending journey toward SPIRITUAL MATURITY. Ouch.    “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”...

Yesterday we addressed the importance of tending the GARDENS OF OUR LIFE with a focus on Christ and that got me thinking about one of the most powerful messages in God’s Word—”Vine & Branches” (John 15)—and its connection to our never-ending journey toward SPIRITUAL MATURITY.    It does not take much of the world’s allure to convince us that we can be the VINE and produce our own...

God started everything in a GARDEN by putting man in charge “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). And he encourages his followers today to be gardeners. He EXPECTS us to tend to the gardens in our life.    Gardens are inextricably linked to our faith walk and spiritual growth.    The first step in that process is to identify what gardens God has given us and then commit to nurture...

We’ve been talking a lot about Spiritual Maturity this month by focusing LESS on what we do and MORE on our surrendered obedience to God. And we’ve accepted that our spiritual growth is not exclusively about accumulating knowledge of God’s Word.    With that foundation in place, we need to look at one of the most important NUANCES in our quest to grow our faith:    Our spiritual...

This just in from our global online tribe: I was taught growing up that God chooses good people and rejects bad people. Is spiritual maturity a form of that same accept/reject idea?    The best place to start answering this deep and extremely important question is to reject, in no uncertain terms, the notion that God chooses good people and rejects bad people. IT SIMPLY IS NOT TRUE. Here’s...