Building on the Foundation

Why do we do the things we do as Christians?  We run around all week busy with our day-to-day lives, hardly giving God a second thought let alone a first thought, worried about this or that, full of fear about this or that thing, scared of what the future might hold, and desperate for things to be good in our lives. We all want the good life, the cozy life, the easy life, and we spend a good amount of our time trying to get it. Has anyone here ever bought a lottery ticket? Me too. We all go through a point in our lives where we long for things to be the way they used to be, for life to be good again. But the thing we often forget is that we were thinking the same exact thing back then as we are now. It’s a bit like fine wine—except it turns out we were drinking grape juice the whole time. We rarely realize just how good we have it until we are looking back on our past in the context of our current life. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence, as they say. We are really...

  God’s Word is filled with Passover symbolism and foreshadows of Jesus Christ’s death as our Passover Lamb. In fact, one could make a case that the entire Bible points to Passover because the entire Bible points to “Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) — and that’s what Passover is all about! “Before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20), God planned for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cover our sins. And at Creation, even before He had created man, God likewise established His appointed times or Holy Days — including Passover, setting the sun and moon in the sky “for signs and seasons [ moedim ; appointed times], and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). So the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the symbolism of Passover is woven throughout the Bible, from the very beginning to the end. The Bible first mentions “unleavened bread,” or the Hebrew matzah (Strong’s # H4682), in Gen. 19, the story of Lot. Now I don’t know whether this event literally took place at Passover or not, but ...

  Have you ever encountered people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions? Who never admit fault for anything, or, if they actually do admit some wrongdoing, still try to blame you or someone else for their wrongdoing? Have you ever encountered people who erupt in anger if corrected in any way, no matter how delicately one approaches it? Or who lash out in anger if you don’t do exactly what they want when they want it? Have you ever encountered people who are thin-skinned and easily offended? So much so that you never know what might set them off? Any innocent word or action might set them off, and so others walk on eggshells around them. These are characteristics of narcissism. Narcissists are, above all else, extraordinarily selfish and self-centered, as we can see from the above description. They feel entitled to getting their own way on everything; they try to manipulate others; they berate and lash out at others, but are easily offended; they refuse to accept ...