“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’) (Isaiah 7:14 NLT). Isaiah gave King Ahaz of Judah this sign from God to show that within only a few years, the kingdoms of Israel and Syria would be gone.

“I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the

We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NLT). Paul used military language to describe his spiritual

“Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just (Psalm 51:4 NLT). David wrote this psalm in repentance after committing adultery with Bathsheba. Although he surely recognized he had sinned against

We are also sending another brother with Titus. All the churches praise him as a preacher of the Good News (2 Corinthians 8:18 NLT). In the apostle Pauls second letter to the Corinthians, he informed them that he was sending three brothers to help with the collection of a gift to help the hurting Christians

“Using a dull ax requires great strength, so sharpen the blade. That’s the value of wisdom; it helps you succeed. (Ecclesiastes 10:10 NLT). Take time to sharpen your saw. One of Solomons habits long before Coveys seven. My maternal grandfather knew this habit. Before the invention of weed-eaters, he used a large sickle to clear

O God, we meditate on your unfailing love as we worship in your Temple” (Psalm 48:9 NLT). Meditating on God’s “unfailing love” is an appropriate act of worship. What kind of love is this? The Hebrew word is “chesed,” which may be translated “lovingkindness” or “covenantal love.” In the Greek New Testament, the word “agape”

“When we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction, with battles on the outside and fear on the inside. But God, who encourages those who are discouraged, encouraged us by the arrival of Titus. (2 Corinthians 7:5-6 NLT). Paul told the Corinthians that the comfort that

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT). King Solomon was the writer of Ecclesiastes. He observed the beauty of how God had assigned everything a

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT). Becoming a Christian is not about self-improvement. It is an invitation to come and die, that we might be born again. It is not incremental nor partial, but