“For we also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Titus 3:3 Deceived – Have you noticed something important in Paul’s list? The first three words are all about mental processes, not about behavior. This is the third…
“For we also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Titus 3:3 Disobedient – What is the essential characteristic of disobedience? Did you say, “Not keeping the rules” or something like that? Did you think that disobedience is…
“For we also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Titus 3:3 Foolish – Airhead! The term was not coined by Hollywood (although it certainly applies there). If you want to meet the original airheads, you have to…
“And he put all things in subjection under His feet,” Ephesians 1:22 Subjection – “You can’t make me!” “Yes, I can.” “Just try!” Have you ever listened to children talk about power? They intuitively know that it is a matter of forced subjection. One will against another. This is the sense of the word hypotasso…
“and if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out” Matthew 5:29 Stumble – This word is all about the cheese. Want to get rid of a mouse? Don’t have a cat? Then you will soon be at the store buying a mousetrap. But the trap won’t do any good at all unless you…
“A city on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:14 Hidden – There are a lot of secrets in the New Testament. There are secret thoughts (Romans 2:16), secret sins (2 Cor. 2:4), secret places (Luke 11:33), secret worship (Matthew 6:4) and secret treasures (Col. 2:3). But some things just can’t be kept secret. Some…
“O Lord, be gracious to me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.” Psalm 41:4 Sinned – We are a culture of lists. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have a “TO DO” list somewhere? We have lists for nearly everything, from grocery shopping to career building. Our thought patterns are conditioned by…
“He said, “Now take, ________, your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” Genesis 22:2 (Please) – It’s there in Hebrew, but nearly every English translation just leaves…
“I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” Luke 7:43 Suppose – Isn’t sarcasm grand? It says so much about the speaker. With just a word of sarcasm you can turn truth into pain, intimacy into fear or vulnerability into resistance. It’s such a useful tool. And it takes almost no training at all to…
“And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19 Make – There is a background to this word that changes its color. When we think of “make” in our culture, our first thought is usually related to some tangible product. We make buildings, cars and consumer products. …
