'Matthew' Tagged Posts
THE PRAYER CLOSET
God expects every Christian to talk to his heavenly father in prayer. We are instructed to pray in private and to make prayer a conversation with God, not a show. God promises that our heavenly Father will hear our prayer and reward us openly.
REJOICE WHEN REVILED
God warns Christians that people will lie about us. We can’t control what others say about us, but we can control how we will respond. God tells us when this happens to us, that instead of getting angry and bitter we are to rejoice. God tells us to rejoice because our reward will be great in heaven.
DOES YOUR SPEECH GIVE YOU AWAY?
Betraying speech. Does your speech betray you? As Peter was denying Jesus, even to the point of cursing (certainly unbecoming of a follower of Christ) those who had been around him and heard him speak knew that Peter was a Galilean (they spoke with a burr), and that he was a disciple of Jesus. Here’s the twist, Peter was trying to deny Jesus but his speech gave him away . Of course, we would never deny that we’re followers of Jesus! Just the opposite, we try to persuade others that we’re followers of Jesus but again, does our speech betray us? Ponder that a spell, meditate on it. Do people listen to you talk and immediately know that you’re a Christian or is your speech peppered with words that reflects the world more that the church?
GOD’S MESSENGERS
Have you ever thought about the fact that YOU might be the “angel” to another person? God has made all of us ambassadors, and given to all of us the ministry of reconciliation. He uses all of us as messengers – the Greek word for angel is messenger.
WHAT DO YOU TREASURE?
While cleaning the home office to make room for working from home due to Covid, I was forced to sort my library into three piles – those to keep, those to hand off to others, those to trash. Some were meaningful to me for who gave it, others for the content. It challenged me to think about why I had each book, and what would be the best place for it to be in the future. It made me think about my treasures, what I value.
SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT
God warns me that just as physical food nourishes the body, God’s Word gives me strength for life. My body can not function properly without physical food, and I cannot function properly without reading God’s Word.
PUT FEAR IN ITS PLACE
Today, people are paralyzed with fear. People are afraid of the future, disease, and death. God tells us not to be afraid of anything that can kill the body, but to only fear God who can destroy the body and soul.
GO TO THE OFFENDER
As Christians, when we have been offended, God has commanded us to go to the offending person alone, and tell him or her how he or she has offended us. We sin when we talk to others about how we have been hurt instead of going to the person that hurt us. When we tell others how we have been hurt, instead of going to the offending person, we are not seeking reconciliation but revenge.