Ecclesiastes 12:10

    Pride is about self. When we think too much of ourself it is pride. When we act selfishly, we act in pride. Pride is about self   But also allies us to the wrong side.   In James 4:6-7, we are told  “ God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble .” So, then it continues by telling us to surrender to him, “ Submit therefore to God ”. Our pride must be curtailed by a willingness to submit and surrender to God. Yet notice the next line, “ Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”   Often, we don’t think of this verse in context with the previous one. We see it as standing up to the devil, but to do that, we must surrender ourselves to the Lord. If we in pride think we can whip the devil, we are just playing his game. What we must do is surrender ourselves to God.   Pride and the devil go hand and hand. Submission and God are linked.  Don’t think you can be full of yourself and full of the Lord. It’s never worked that ...

    To listen to us, we seem to be experts on everything. Tax laws, police procedures, driving, medical practice, product shipping, and street repair. At least we are willing to tell others how all that should be done.    In James 4:11-12, he makes an interesting perceptive;  “ Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?”  When we judge others, we place ourselves on the throne of God and outside the jurisdiction of the law. We think we are better and are not subject to the same law.    Yet we are not God. We don’t have the authority, the knowledge, or the power to take that position.  We need to remember that before we are quick to pronounce judg...

    Author Herman Rosenblat wrote a heartbreaking book called The Angel at the Fence about a girl , who would become his future wife, lovingly tossing apples to him over a fence at his concentration camp. Oprah Winfrey described it as the single greatest love story she heard in over 22 years of hosting her show. The only problem was that it wasn’t true. The story was fabricated and historically impossible.    Yet that did not deter him much.  Rosenblat would later say, "It wasn't a lie. Even now, I believe it, that she was there and she threw the apples to me. In my imagination, it was true."      Unfortunately, this ability to choose fiction over fact is not an unusual phenomenon. Scripture tells us man has “ exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator ” (Romans 1:25).  The world today is full of created religions and man-made plans of salvation. Even with the truth of the word of God...

  If I were to ask you the length of the Mississippi River, you probably wouldn’t know the exact number. So, if I said just put it between two numbers, you might have a better chance. You might be willing to wager a bit of money on it. In fact, it is a bet you could never lose. Just pick one and an obscenely large number, and it would be technically between those two. Yet when researchers did this as an experiment, that is not what happened. People gave way closer numbers even if doing so gave them a higher chance to lose.     There is an interesting psychological effect here; we are quick to set lower limits than we have to.   And it is also what we do with God.   In Ephesians 3:20, Paul writes, “ Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us ,” God can do far more than we can imagine, far more than we think, far more than we are willing to ask. Neither God’s love no...

  There is a quote from a tv series I watched years ago that has stayed with me over the years.  “When one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like old leather. And finally, it becomes so familiar that one can’t remember feeling any other way.”   Words from a fictional captain in a pretend world, but still containing a lot of truth   In a world today that has mechanized outrage, it seems that there are those who are continually mad about something. There is always someone who has done wrong, something to rant about, something to frustrate and irk.   Yet we seem very comfortable in it. The anger gives us a sense of high-mindedness. We are righteous in our anger. We care so much that we must bathe ourselves in disgust and outrage toward those in the wrong.   So, we carry on the grudge. We continue to poke the wound. We wear our hate as a cloak around us, thinking it is a regal robe that suits us we...