“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” Mark 13:31 Will not pass away – What will pass away? According to Jesus, heaven and earth. What does that man? Quite simply, all that we know, experience, imagine and hope for. Not just this beat-up, sin drenched earth, but also heaven,…
“that you may prove what God’s will is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2 That – Prayer is communion with the Father. Prayer is soul breathing, silent longing, human being before my God. Prayer is not so much checklists and requests as it is surrender to His purposes. This is how…
“The sum of Your word is truth,” Psalm 119:160 Making it True Truth – Yesterday we looked at this word, ‘aman, the root of many words about certainty. One Hebrew verb form of this root expresses causing something to be true. We could translate ‘aman in this form as “caused to be certain” or “caused…
“The sum of Your word is truth,” Psalm 119:160 What is Truth? – Pilate Truth – You must leave our post-modern paradigm behind. You must walk away from the conception that truth depends on your point of view. That was Pilate’s mistake. In his world, truth was relative to the situation. He stood in the…
“The sum of Your word is truth,” Psalm 119:160 The Best You Can Get Sum – The Hebrew word rosh has a very wide range of meanings. It can designate a person’s head, a chief, a leader, the source and even hair on your head. But here it is used as a metaphor to mean…
“The sum of Your word is truth,” Psalm 119:160 Words from a different World Word – What does God say? Words! But not the kind of words that we think of in our world. We think of words as symbols for the real thing. Our concept of “word” is essentially Greek. It is tied to…
“Then God said” Genesis 1:3 Getting Things Done Said – How do we get things done? The bottom line to most of our activity is that things get done by the application of some kind of force. Want to build something? Apply physical force. Want to buy something? Apply financial force. The human experience of…
“Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” Deuteronomy 6:4 What You See Hear – The great shema. Hear. In this pivotal text of the Old Testament, we are introduced to a different view of life. God’s paradigm is not our paradigm. Life is not based on WYSIWYG (What You See…
“By David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” Psalm 25:1 Praying Life, Breathing Soul Soul – Hebrew is a language of concrete images. It is not like the Western European languages that we use; languages full of abstract terms without physical references like “time” or “omnipotent” or “omniscient”. Hebrew deals with tangible…
“By David. To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.” Psalm 25:1 The Context of Prayer Lift up – “To You, Yahweh, I lift”. The Hebrew verb is nasa. It has three categories of meaning: to lift up (literally), to bear or carry (used especially of carrying away guilt and sin) and to take…
