Romans 10:17 - So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

How does someone come to believe in Jesus? What is necessary for that belief in him to take root? In order to believe in anything, you have to know that it exists. You have to be exposed to it in some way. You can’t believe in anything that you have never seen, heard of, or have any awareness of. For intents and purposes, if you have no exposure to something, it might as well not exist to you.

So with that in mind, the only way to come to believe in Jesus is to see him, hear him, or become aware of him in some way. Since we cannot see Jesus today, or hear his voice with our own ears, we have to look for evidence of him outside of that lack of personal experience. In other words, we cannot interact with Jesus right now in his physical form, so we have to gain awareness of him in other ways.

Thankfully, we have eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said that were written down and passed down from generation to generation. People who walked with Jesus, talked with him and learned from him, wrote much of it down so that others who had not seen him might still hear his voice through their writing and come to believe that Jesus is the son of God and the giver of eternal life.

If we had no awareness of Jesus, then we would find no reason to put our faith in anything that he said or did, especially what he did on the cross and in his resurrection. Now, we know from what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that God has revealed himself to the world, even making his invisible attributes known so that humanity is without excuse. No one can claim that they never saw evidence of God, because all creation speaks of who he is.

However, instead of acknowledging the true God, men and women throughout history have made their own gods or worshipped demons, calling them gods. We’ve exchanged the truth of God for lies. Because of this, spirituality has become a generic catch all for all kinds of systems of belief, all claiming to have some sort of connection with the divine. But the problem is that according to Jesus, there is no access to God except through him.

Therefore, if we hear Jesus’ words that he is the son of God who came into the world to save sinners and bring us home, then we have something of immense value to believe in. Without his precious words coming into our ears and changing our hearts, we would have no faith, and no hope. His words are absolutely necessary for us to know God and to have access to God. There is no other way to saving faith, no matter how flashy or trendy another way may be.

Today you will no doubt be bombarded with many different beliefs in the world, all claiming to have the answer. Hold up the words of Christ to these things, and you will find that only his words can stand the test of time, the test of scrutiny, and only his words can change lives in the way that is truly needed. What a hope we have in Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

Proverbs 12:22 - Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight.

Being honest should be one of the simplest things to do. Think about it. All an honest person does is say what actually happened. There is no embellishment, no twisting of the facts, just a genuine representation of what is real. However, while the idea of being honest is about as logical as can be, the actual practice of honesty seems to stump humanity time and time again.

Why is it that we struggle so much with being honest? There are many reasons, but here are just a few. You may lie because you don’t want to get in trouble for something that happened. You may lie because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or lose your relationship with them if you told them the truth. You may lie because you want to take advantage of someone or gain control over a situation. There are countless other reasons, but most of them seem to stem out of pride and self preservation.

From childhood into adulthood, lies seem like a handy tool to get out of a bind, but they are actually creating a prison for those who use them. The writer of this proverb wants us to know just how bad lying is, so he calls it a word that we don’t like to use or hear much these days. He calls lying lips and abomination. In other words, lying is something that God looks at with utter disgust and hatred.

So with that in mind, those little white lies don’t seem so harmless any more do they? God sees just how damaging every lie really is, and he watches day by day as the father of lies, Satan, turns more and more people to diminish how horrible lies really are. Lies produce nothing but destroyed trust, and when trust is broken it becomes very difficult to ever believe the lying person again.

This is why the second part of this proverb is so interesting. Who does God look at with delight? You would think that the writer of this proverb would say, “Those who speak truth are his delight” because that is the contrast to the person with lying lips. But instead, he says that it is the person who “acts faithfully”. This is not a mistake.

In order to be faithful in your actions, you have to be genuine in your speech. If you say that you are going to wash the dishes, and you do, then you are considered faithful because you lived up to what you said. In other words, an honest person’s words are proven by the actions that fulfill them. The reason this delights God is because this is how he is. He always speaks the truth, and we know that because his faithfulness to us proves it.

You are meant to reflect the character of God in the world, and you can do that by simply telling the truth. The more that you hide, the more of a prison of lies you will create for yourself, and one day God will shine light on those lies. You can be honest with others today and imitate your Father God, and in doing so you will have more freedom and hope than any lie could give you.

Romans 8:31-32 - What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

What a precious gift these verses are to the body of Christ. In a world where we may face many persecutions and suffering, feel the weight and consequences of our sins, and feel the lack of so many needed things, Paul tells us just how wonderful it is for us to know God and be known by him.

Think about the phrase, “God is for us”. It’s not just that he is with us, or that he knows us, but also that he is “for” us. Think of how undeserving it is that God would be for a person who still sins against him. God sees you, knows your failings and your weaknesses, and yet if you are in Christ, then he is for you. He supports you, he walks with you, he provides for you and he protects you. If the God who created all things, knows all things, and is king over all things knows you and loves you, what could possibly get past his protection? We will face sufferings, no doubt about it, but having God in our corner when trials come means that the trials and sufferings cannot ultimately destroy us. Who can win a battle against the Lord? No one.

How then do we know that he is for us? Because he gave his own son for us. The Father gave the Son as a willing sacrifice to bring you back to himself. God the Father gave Jesus up to the violence and wickedness of men so that you could be freed from your sin and have new life in Christ. If you want an example of what it looks like for God to be for someone, look at Jesus. Not even death could hold him because of the Father’s love for him. Look at the disciples who suffered many things but their promised gift of salvation and a future home could never be taken from them.

There is so much good news in these verses! Nothing can stand against God, so nothing can stand against his church. God wants us to have life and freedom from sin so he gave us Jesus to die in our place. If this was all there was to the story, this would be enough to praise God for an eternity, but Paul isn’t finished. In addition to this, Paul writes that God will not only give us Jesus, but all things.

Now, don’t misunderstand Paul here. Just because you are a child of God doesn’t mean that you will get whatever you ask for. What this means is that God will give you everything that you need when you need it, and sometimes we don’t even know what that is until God provides it for us. Because of God’s grace, he will give us everything that pertains to life and godliness. In other words, there is simply no end to what God does for his children.

Hold fast to these truths today and rejoice in what he has done for you. Think of the strength and hope that you can have today in your great God who is for you, gave his son to save you, and provides for you time and time again. We certainly have much to be grateful for!

Exodus 20:16 - “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

If you have ever had anyone say something untrue about you, then you can appreciate the importance of this commandment. As human beings, we were created to be in honest fellowship with one another, but for all kinds of reasons we can say things about one another that aren’t accurate and the result of doing so can be devastating.

Imagine that one morning you wake up and get in your car to drive to work. You are feeling a bit too tired from staying up too late the night before, and you probably aren’t ready to drive just yet. But, because you are running late, you start to reverse out of the driveway and because you aren't paying attention, you go too far and back up into your neighbor’s fence across the street.

You hear the crack of the fence and realize what you’ve done, but because you are late for work, and because you don’t want to get in trouble, you quickly drive off.  While at work a co-worker notices some dents and scratches on the back of your car. When asked about it you say, “Oh, some neighbor kids were throwing rocks on the street and hit my car.” You know it’s not true, but no one will know whether it happened or not.

Then after a long day of work you return home and see your neighbors across the street picking up pieces of their fence, wondering what happened.  As you get out of the car, they walk up to you and ask if you saw anything this morning when you left. Here’s the chance to be honest, right? But instead, you tell them, “You know, the neighbor’s son just turned sixteen. I hate to say this, but maybe he wasn’t paying attention this morning on the way to school and backed into your fence.” In this scenario you have lied at least twice, and the result of those lies is that now your co-worker thinks the kids on your street are terrible, and the neighbor across the street is assuming the worst of the sixteen year old boy who may have a hard time defending himself. Out of the motive of self-preservation, your false witness against others may have terrible consequences.

God is the father of truth because God is truth. He is opposed to lies because he knows the damage that they do. When we allow ourselves to bear false witness about someone else, we are not imitating the Father, we are actually imitating the devil. He is the father of lies, and he loves to destroy trust within relationships. This is one reason why God has not merely given this as a suggestion for us, but as a command. Our integrity in the truth is of tremendous importance.

As you think about your interactions that you’ve had this week and the ones you will have today, be a person of integrity when speaking with others. Don’t save yourself by throwing someone else under the bus, or wrongfully accuse someone of something that they didn’t do. The truth sets us free, but lies imprison us and steal our strength. Make it your aime today to live in the truth of the Lord, loving people by being a true witness in a world of lies.

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If there is one commonality that all human beings share, it is the innate desire to be loved. Maybe we don’t think about it all time, but deep within each one of us is the need for love in our lives. Children want and need to be loved by their parents. Parents want and need to be loved by their children. Relationships may begin with other common interests, but what causes relationships to mature is how much love is present in that relationship.

When you look around you, no doubt you will see people in all walks of life doing all kinds of things, sometimes because they love others, and many times because they love themselves. People feel loved by being supported, encouraged, helped, listened to, served, and so on. You can probably think right now about times when you have felt loved by others, or times when you’ve loved others well.

There are many ways that you can show love, but by far the greatest would be by laying down your own health and well being, even your own life for the sake of others. We honor mothers or fathers for how they continually sacrifice their own wants and desires for the sake of their children. We think of military men and women who have put themselves in harm's way to save their fellow soldiers. We even give medals for this type of behavior, all of which comes from a place of love.

So how amazing is it, that the God of all creation, saw our desperate need in our sinfulness, and because he loves us, sent his only son to die on our behalf to pay for our sins? It is the greatest picture of love that the world has ever known. God didn’t have to do anything for us. He owes us nothing. And yet, he did something and the reason for that has nothing to do with what we can do for him. In love he saw our hopelessness. In love he gave the solution. In love he brings us in, and in love he brings us home. 

This great love was shown in the death of Jesus Christ, the only person who has ever loved perfectly. He loved perfectly in his life, and he loved perfectly in his death. Think about this amazing statement: He loved you personally when he died on the cross. Jesus died knowing and loving individual people and by God’s grace, you are one of those people.

So what then do you think of this great love? Have you believed that God loves you this much and do you believe it today? If you do, you have received the greatest gift from that love that you could ever receive, in that you will live forever with this God who loves you to the uttermost. Take time today to think on this undeserved love, and really try to absorb it. Rest in it. Hope in it. Find your strength in it, and enjoy it. God has loved you, he loves you still, and he will love you for an eternity.  

Romans 12:11-13 - Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

The Bible is full of all kinds of writing, some of which can be hard to understand. There are times when after reading it, you can walk away unsure of what you are supposed to do with what you just read. A lot of times, we just want something practical that we can put into practice as quickly as possible. Thankfully, these verses are about as straightforward as can be, but even with that being the case, we still struggle to put what Paul says into practice.

So what then do we read here? Don’t be slothful in your zeal, but be fervent in spirit instead. We can wonder what this means, but Paul basically gives us the answer by saying, “serve the Lord”. To have zeal for something is to be passionate and driven to attain a goal. Our goal is to glorify and magnify Christ in our lives, and we do that through our service to him. There is no greater goal because there is no greater God. The sooner we recognize this, the less we will want to be lazy in our service to God.

He then tells us to rejoice in hope. There are many circumstances and situations that steal our joy from us, but we can always rejoice in the hope that we have in God. You may feel like you are in the mud and sorrow may overwhelm you, but the hope that God gives through his promises to you can always bring joy. Let that hope in, and that hope will put joy in your weary heart.

Next, be patient in tribulation. Because of your hope in what God will do, you know that your trials are not the end, but in God’s economy they are a means to an end. Trials, even at their worst, are temporary. Perhaps you will have a trial that lasts your whole life, but even then, eternity with God will make that temporary trial feel like a breath.

How do we maintain this hope, joy and patience? By being constant in prayer. You can speak to the Lord any time you want. Talk to him as you would a friend, because he is your friend and he will hear you. As you pray here and there throughout the day, you bring more of God into your day, and therefore more joy, hope and patience into your heart and mind.

But it doesn’t stop with you does it? All that the Lord is producing in you can be used to serve others. In fact, when we help to meet the needs of our fellow saints, we are not only serving them, but we are serving the Lord. Welcome other believers into your home, pray with them, share meals with them, serving them to God’s glory.

Are these not practical things? Think about how you might integrate what Paul has written here into your life today, and then pursue it. If all you do is think, and never do, then what good is that? You have the hope of God. Serve him, serve others, and see God do great things.

Psalm 34:17-18 - When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

What are we to do about all of the challenges that each day brings? When chronic illness or pain rears its ugly head and seems unbearable, what do we do? When a close relationship is strained and on the verge of collapsing, what do we do? When you look at your bank account and realize there is nothing left to pay the bills, what do you do?

Sometimes it can feel like no matter what we do, help just won’t come. Maybe you see a medical professional for your health and they send you home with some medication but it doesn’t really help the problem. After that you see another professional in natural medicine only to find that their solution is really not solving anything either. It’s easy to feel frustrated and to begin to fall into a season of despair when help does not seem to come.

Yet, in these verses we see the psalmist write that when the righteous cry for help, the Lord responds in two ways. One, the Lord hears us and two, the Lord delivers us. What is challenging about this is that we can sometimes see God as being about as helpful as the doctor who says they can help, but nothing ever gets better.

The truth is, we don’t know whether things are getting better or not because we can become so focused on the emotional or physical pain that we don’t see healing and help and in other areas. The medication the doctor provides may not make the pain go away, but it may be healing parts of your body that need to be healed first before the pain can be addressed.

In the same manner, we often do not see what God does in response to our prayers for help, but as we see in this verse we can count on him to hear us and we can count on him to deliver us from trouble in some way shape or form. Why can we count on the Lord to do this? Because he is near to us. He sees your brokenheartedness because he is with you in it. He knows your pain and sorrow to an even deeper level than you do.

God is faithful and compassionate towards us, and he knows how crushed the spirit can be in times of trouble. He experienced it to the utmost extreme when he went to the cross. We may not see him working, but he is. We can get so set on specific outcomes when we have pain and suffering that we may miss that God is healing us and helping us in ways we won’t realize until we are finally with him.

As you face the troubles of the day, do not let the devil convince you of the lies that God is not for you, that God is not with you, that God does not hear you and that God will not help you. It is hard to fight this fight of faith, but you can fight it because the Lord is with you. Despair need not win this battle. Hope in the listening ear and mighty supporting arm of the Lord to carry you through today’s troubles. He is ever with you, cannot fail you, and he is the one who will bring you home to a place where trouble will never harm you again.

1 Peter 2:9-10 - But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

One of the most important questions we have to answer in this life is this: who am I? How you answer that question will impact every area of your life for good or for ill.  The search for personal identity is a search that has sparked all kinds of definitions of how a person defines themself to crop up in the world. The problem is that if we don’t know who we are supposed to be, or we don’t have an external force defining our identity for us, we will never find an end to that search. In order to find the identity people desperately want, they have done everything from changing jobs to changing schools to changing communities to even changing their biology to support who they think they are supposed to be.

Sadly, this search for identity can often lead people away from the God who has defined this world and defined us as human beings and as individuals. He knit each of us in our mother’s womb and wired us to think and function in this world in a way this is in one sense unique, but also fits within the whole. If we ignore how God sees us, then we will never truly find who we were created to be.

As Christians, we have received salvation from the wrath of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This carries with it a new understanding of who we now are in Christ. People often don’t like to be defined by others, but to have God tell us who we are is not negative, especially given how he identifies us as his people.

We are a chosen race. He chose you personally and made you a part of a race of people that is not identified by color or gender, but by being united in Christ. We are a royal priesthood, carrying with us a position of worship in God’s kingdom. We are God’s possession, and nothing can take us from his hand. We are God’s people, meaning that we have a home to call our own. We were once a people in darkness, but now we are people of the light. Finally, we are a people who only have these things because of mercy, which we didn’t have before.

This is who we are, and because of that identity, we can rejoice because the community and relationship that we all long for can be ours through Christ bringing us together under God. Once we see ourselves in the merciful light, the only logical thing is to tell others just how wonderful our great God is for showing us who we are and through identity, having great purpose in the world.

You can live today in this identity. You need not wonder who you are or what meaning there is to your life. God has given us these things, and what a hope we have knowing that our identity is not found in things that change, but is found in an unchangeable, perfect God.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 - And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

If you have been a Christian for any number of years and have been a part of a small group or Bible study, you know how times of discussion can go between believers. There are people that seem to have very little difficulty in coming up with something to say, and others who feel like if they open their mouth then they might say something really dumb and never live it down.

One of the reasons that some Christians don’t talk a lot during group discussions is because they don’t quite know how to say what they want to say, and they are sure that someone else can probably say it better than they could. They might think of themselves as not being very smart, or well read, or even immature.

When it comes to Christian doctrine and talking about scripture, there are people who are able to quote loads of verses, think of quotes from books, or even elaborate on philosophy. It can seem like this is the goal, being able to speak with great breadth and depth about God and his word. However, Paul puts some of that to rest with what he writes here.

Paul was well-educated, especially in religion, and he could have said any number of things to the Corinthians. However, when he was with them, he didn’t teach them with big words and clever phrases. On the contrary, he gave the testimony of God to them with simplicity. It’s not that he didn’t talk with them about difficult things, but what he wanted them to know most of all was not his skills in speech or theology, but rather the person of Jesus Christ and his crucifixion.

At the core of the Christian life is the truth that Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins. In order to understand why that matters we have to look at what Jesus said and what he did. As we read the gospels, we begin to understand why we as sinners need Jesus as our savior. It is this simple message of Jesus’ death for us that forms the cornerstone of everything we believe.

This leads to the point. What matters is how central and important Jesus Christ is to you, not how well you talk about him. What is going to change your life and the lives of those around you is recognizing that Jesus died for your sins, and if you hold on to that truth, then you can live as a free person in this world. You see, we get bogged down with how we speak and how lofty our words should be, but in reality, God’s gospel is understandable from the very young to the very old.

There is much that you can know today, but at the very top of the list should be these things. If you find yourself unsure of what to say about God, whether that be with unbelievers or other Christians, then simply go back to what you know about Jesus and the cross. You never know how that straightforward message could change a life for an eternity. Who is Jesus and what has he done? Can you think of any more valuable conversation to have than that?

Romans 8:35-37 - Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

The love with which we are loved by Christ is a love that we will never lose. It’s important for us as Christians to remember this truth. Once we have been adopted by God and made sons and daughters in his family, nothing can take us away from him. Unfortunately, because the world is hard, we may find ourselves feeling as if God’s love is not with us after all. These verses are a reminder of just how permanent the love of God is for us, and we would do well to think about what Paul has written here.

First, we will never be separated from God’s love for us. Sadly, this isn’t the case with any other relationship that we have in this life. You only need to think about instances like the holocaust where family members were seperated by Nazi soldiers, some going to death camps and others going to work camps. Siblings were separated from one another and parents were separated from their children. This terrible pain of loss is something that we will never experience with our Father God. Why is that? Because no power is greater than his to snatch us from his hand.

Second, no trial or difficulty will be able to take his love from us. Whether you are persecuted or your health deteriorates, your suffering may distract you from God’s love, but it can’t remove it. The same thing can be said about distress. No sorrow or anguish or pain or confusion or difficulty can overcome the great love of God. We allow it to at times, but God never allows these things to take away his love from us completely.

Third, no amount of harm that others do to you for believing in Christ can diminish God’s great love for you. Your body may be destroyed by torture, but the love of God will continue to be strong and healthy within your heart. Fourth, the loss of food or drink or clothing can’t take away the love of God either. These are all important things, but they only matter for this temporal life, not for the life to come.

Finally, no danger or weapon can take away God’s love. We may find ourselves at times in terrible circumstances where great harm can come to us, but God’s love that is in us will not be harmed no matter what faces us. All of these things that Paul lists are valuable aspects of human life, and so the thought of losing any of them seems devastating. Yet, if you have the love of God, you can lose everything because you know that God has more in store for you than what you have or experience in this world.

Today, you are more than a conqueror when all of these things come against you. You will triumph for the same reason  that Jesus triumphed over suffering and death, and it is because the same love with which the Father loves the Son, is how he loves you. Take hope in this great love today, and see the truth that no matter what comes, God’s love will sustain you to the end.