Mission Faithwalk

                 The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name. (Zechariah 14:9) Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16) We’re coming up on a holiday in which we celebrate America as independent from kings. We have a carefully crafted governmental system with checks and balances that are designed to prevent the government from the sort of abuses kings tend to inflict. At the same time, there is a push toward “No Kings” in our culture, which is also a push toward the whole world being under a single leadership. That single leadership, we’re told, will have no kings because the people will govern themselves, will plan their society and their economy. The people will make the decisions. Of cour...

    Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”         When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:1-6)   After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb....

                 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance . (II Peter 3:9)                 Have you considered how patient God is with you? Today’s verse specifically mentions that God is patient with us in waiting so that everyone can come to repentance. That is of great importance. But if God is willing to wait patiently for us to come to repentance, does it make sense that He should be impatient about everything, or anything else? This isn’t to say that He never says, “Now!” But just for a moment, today, think about it. What are the things that elude you as a Christian? Does your prayer life lack? Do you worship/praise as you should? How about sharing your faith? Is giving hard? Have you failed to be the Christian, employee, citiz...

                     Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.    For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:24-27)                 There’s a saying that has been going around for a while. “When God put a calling on your life, He already factored in your stupidity.” Peter seems to me to be a great example of this. The passage above comes right after Peter gets done scolding Jesus because Jesus told the disciples He...

                 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18)                 Here’s the verse Jesus quoted (in part) as the second part of “the greatest commandment.” Putting it in its original context is enlightening. We have two possibilities: seeking revenge/bearing a grudge and loving. Put another way, we can either hate or love. Put even more clearly, we can either not love or love. It’s not a difficult concept, until our human nature gets involved. At that point, we start trying to pretend that our hatred is not hatred because, of course, hatred isn’t nice and we want to be seen as nice.                 The whole “nice” bit is a pitfall for us, because to be nice means we must accept, ...

                       For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 1:4)                 Not long ago, we explored some of what Paul wrote about false teachers. Today, let’s look at what Jude wrote. As a reminder, Jude was one of Jesus’ half-brothers, like James. In this letter, he wanted to write something about what he and his audience had in common: their salvation, but something had happened or been said that took the letter in a different direction. This is a common theme in the New Testament, so while we may be tempted to ignore it, we need to pay attention.              ...