Building on the Foundation

We live in a rough world; a world bent on our destruction and the destruction of our hearts. In our daily lives, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death constantly because any moment might be our last. I'm not trying to be dramatic, that's simply the truth. Very few deaths are expected, and most happen completely out of the blue, so not only might every moment be our last moment, but it might also be someone we love's last moment. There are a lot of things that could be said about that, but the main lesson to draw is that we need to make every moment we have with those we love count because we might not get another one. Someday we will have seen someone for the last time on this earth and not even realize it. That's a bit of a sobering thought when you recognize that our time with those we love is temporary. Losing someone can be one of the greatest emotional struggles we will face in our lives and the pain is one of the deepest and longest-lasting pains in th...

  When God delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, He didn’t take them straight to the Promised Land. They weren’t ready. So first He brought them through the wilderness to Mt. Sinai and gave them His laws. He charged them, saying, “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5-6). There at Mt. Sinai, God and Israel entered into a covenant. The Israelites said, “All that the LORD has said we will do, and be obedient” (Ex. 24:7). But Israel still wasn’t yet ready to enter the Promised Land. God knew His people needed more preparation, more instruction, and more testing to see if they truly would walk in His ways and obey His commandments. The journey to the Promised Land wasn’t over; it was just beginning. Though the Israelite s ’ subsequent rebellions would prolong the journey many years lo...

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...