The Blog

Read  John 10:1 through 11:57 Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, had been dead 4 days when Jesus arrived to comfort his sisters. Martha told Jesus her brother would not have died if only He had come earlier. Jesus explained to her that Lazarus would rise again. Knowing the Scriptures, Martha said she knew that he would rise again …

Read  Jeremiah 24:1–10; 27:1 through 29:32 Standing on top of a rock in the Grand Tetons, Keith rediscovered God. He had grown up in the church and acted like a Christian, but he walked away from truth as a teenager. Looking over the majesty of those mountains, Keith’s heart surged with the knowledge that God existed and was powerful. The …

Read  John 4:1–26 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). When Jesus met the woman at the well He knew who she was and what she needed to hear, but she was …

Read  Micah 6:1 through 7:20 Debbie sat weeping in the Christian counselor’s office. Finally, she broke down and told the therapist the truth. Her heart had been burdened with guilt ever since having an abortion ten years earlier. She had asked God to forgive her perhaps a thousand times. But Debbie just couldn’t bring herself to believe that He actually …

Read  Isaiah 44:1 through 48:22 Sunlight was streaming through the windows of the Boeing 747. Then, without warning, the light disappeared. The plane had climbed into a dark cloud. Finally, the big plane tilted upward into the bright sunshine again. Outside the window was a beautiful sight. The sunlight was shining on the clouds beneath the plane, turning the clouds …

Read  Isaiah 40:1 through 43:28 Isaiah was facing a discouraged, weak, and powerless nation, which felt completely out of control. He knew they had brought it on themselves, as they had failed to pray and seek the Lord. But he also knew Jehovah was compassionate, longing to help His chosen people. So he reminded this hurting, depressed nation, which hardly …

Read  Hebrews 8:1 through 10:18 For all the physical conditioning required for an athlete to excel in competition, mental preparation is just as vital. A weightlifter stares hard at the hundreds of pounds he or she is about to lift off the floor, envisioning it hoisted in the air. A diver stands poised on the high board, mentally reviewing every …

Read  Isaiah 1:1 through 5:30 Everyone has played charades. One player acts out a word or phrase silently, and the other players attempt to guess the term. This can be a fun game—as long as we don’t play it with God. Many people put on a show for God, going through the motions with no intent of living genuinely for …

Read Colossians 1:1 through 3:4 Sometimes when we read the New Testament or the history of the Early Church, we do so with idealistic filters. We imagine the early Christians as almost sinless dynamos of faith who risked everything in order to follow the Lord. But Christians then, like Christians today, were sinners redeemed by God’s grace. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs …

Read  Song of Solomon 1:1 through 8:14 Most people have at least one “lost-as-a-child” story. I have two. I was gazing at a huge wall of linens mother was buying. Suddenly a cold dread struck me as I realized that she, and the shopping cart holding my younger sister, had vanished. The solitude, the fear one feels when one is …