Keeping the Sabbath is portrayed rather as a stoppage. It is good for everyone: for the purpose of refocusing on holiness (all concerns that stem from belonging to God), in order to enjoy God’s blessings of that day and its potential. The physical nature was not to be worn out, dishonored, and slowly destroyed by restless occupation.

If you want to live long in the land where God places you, you’ve got to have this intergeneration stability. Today, all this individual freedom leads many young people to think that the whole universe begins with them. When we begin to think like that, we start to process everything through a lens that anything happening before me is not important. And we are then failing to give them what they most need.

The true measure of success for Christian parenting is the parents’ own character. To the degree that we have followed God’s design for parenting, we have succeeded as parents before God. As a general rule, parents who follow biblical principles in bringing up their children will see a positive effect on the character of their children.

There is something intrinsically self-denying in a really good marriage. And unbelievably fulfilling. If we dispose of our western/modern culture baggage connected to the misunderstanding of the word, God’s love is central.

Before the Fall, God was at the center of Adam and Eve’s world. Now, since the fall, the reality is each individual naturally wants to be the center of the universe.

Those who want to be leaders in the church today must begin by recognizing that there is no special, elitist qualification. The qualifications for leadership is given elsewhere in the Bible: 1 Timothy 3:1–7. The passage contains nothing about intelligence, decisiveness, drive, wealth, or power. Almost everything on the list is elsewhere in the New Testament required of all believers.

Christians, remember that God loves to choose the weak and the lowly and the despised, the nobodies, so that no one may boast before Him. The immediate application of this exhortation is the prohibition of factions and cliques. So then, no more boasting about men! (3:21a).

Christian leaders are only servants of Christ and are not to be accorded the allegiance reserved for God alone. God cares about His church, and He holds its leaders accountable for how they build it. Paul uses two analogies to prove these truths.

How wretched and foolish it is to honor the siren opinion makers of our day, if they have no real understanding of the cross. God’s immeasurably wise plan of redemption has been revealed, yet people still do not believe. They still do not see that His plan is wise, and central to all. If we the “mature” have come to grasp it, it is because “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” (2:10)

People are saved by GOD, not because he chooses those who boast some superior trait or insight, or that he loves people who judge themselves to be wise, but because he has determined to rescue those who believe him.