What does Jesus expect from us if we truly know Him? He himself said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But that implies that there is still a yoke. There is still work to be done. So what must we do? Or rather, what must we be?

Every day we can observe the harmfulness of living out a false identity - vitriol and outrage in identity politics, living by “animal instinct,” racial divisions, etc. e problem is that these “identities” value you either far too little or far too much. If you are in Christ, God the Father adopts you as His own, calls you by a new name, and withholds nothing that He has from you. You are not orphans milling through garbage looking for hope, you are sons and you have an eternal and irrevocable inheritance! Live in this identity.

The meaning of life is to know the God who made us. The purpose of life is to share the God who saved us. Both knowing Christ and sharing Him involve forgiveness. If we have received Christ’s forgiveness we will give it. Refusal to forgive is a refusal to be forgiven.

Being right with God involves a right heart as well as a right head. If the heart is wrong, the head will follow as surely as night follows day.

In an authentic disciple, a merciful heart comes as natural as breathing. Mercy feels contempt for the bully, but compassion for the broken.

Righteousness is love in street clothes…love on dress parade.

Our native languages, the words in vogue and the ones out of fashion, sometimes subtly reflect our shifting cultural values. For example, outside of church, maybe even inside it, when was the last time you heard anyone use the word ‘righteousness?” Does that observation give you some hint of the declining spiritual, moral and ethical sensibilities of our society?

“Faith takes hold of God’s resources in the midst of the onslaughts of evil and produces the firm resolve which douses anything the enemy throws at the believer.” Andrew T Lincoln

To this godless world that seeks to make its way by its own vain wisdom, rejecting God and trash- talking His people, the Lord said 2800 years ago:

“Devise a plan but it will be thwarted; state a proposal, but it will not stand, for God is with us.” (Isaiah 8:10)

Nothing has changed about that outcome. God is sovereign; His adversaries are simply silly.

Rightly understood, the meek are far from weak and the weak are far from meek.