Category Archives: spiritual lessons
Release the Perfume!
“Your love delights me, my treasure, my bride. Your love is better than wine, your perfume more fragrant than spices.” Song of Solomon 4:10 “When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume.” Luke 7:37 What about you? What precious perfume is locked inside [...]
Walking Through Fire With a Gasoline Suit On
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you cross rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned, nor will the flames hurt you. Isaiah 43:2, NCV There is an unique immunity that is given to the simple. Believers find that suddenly [...]
The Scary Part of Depression
“Must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you All through my life? –sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing–oh, worst of things!–the same head?– And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too?” Edna St. Vincent Millay The critical issue we face is the reality of living with ourselves through an acute episode of depression or mania. I [...]
Getting to Know Your “Sheepiness”
I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and they know me. –John 10:14 The shepherds of Israel have a custom of marking their sheep to make them distinct from each other. Each bears a unique notch or brand that makes them distinguishable from their companions. It is not done for aesthetics, but recognition. Christ gives [...]
God’s Strange University
No book, nor tutor will give us the education we need. We must patiently go through seasons of difficulty and temptation before we can understand what our brother or sister is facing. Furthermore, we must advance through different levels; sickness, injury, loss and discouragement. On top of this, we must be tutored in the language [...]
Kissing Twisted Lips
God accommodates Himself to our ‘sickness’. We find that He has this beautiful quality about Him, that He becomes quite tender and gentle around any spiritual disease. In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face: [...]
Christian, Where is Your Umbrella?
Sometime ago there was a town which had experienced a prolonged and difficult drought. There was no water to be found for crops and livestock, and hardly enough for the people of this once prosperous village. There was nothing to be done, and is often the case the town fathers finally turned to the churches [...]
I Love the House! Psalm 84:1-4
1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies. 2 I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God. 3 Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest [...]
Our Gentle God Loves Kindness
When I think “gentleness“, what pops into my mind is my wife holding and caressing my infant daughter almost 20 years ago. Her touch is soothing. She softly hums a lullaby. The farthest thing from her thinking at that quiet moment, is anything harsh or cruel. This is critical because of what happens next. One of my [...]