'reconciliation' Tagged Posts
Daily Devotions
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” vs. 6 Psalm 23:4-6 Not every day is filled with green pastures and still waters! No matter how carefully we walk the paths of righteousness, sooner or later we’re going to enter the valley of the shadow of death, and it’s going to be scary. And guess what, our Shepherd Lord plunges into…
Daily Devotions
If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” vs. 15 Matthew 18:15-17 Because life in our world is both good and broken, humans have had to deal with the matter of forgiveness from the beginning. Certainly it was at the center of Jesus’ ministry and he regularly offered unconditional forgiveness to the sinners that crowded…
Daily Devotions
“The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.” vs. 20 Psalm 145:14-21 When we read our scriptures we are tempted to take to heart the verses that we agree with and totally discount those with which we have issues. And we’re not alone. Nearly all people are adept at cherry picking as they study the bible, loving the parts that support positions they already hold, and ignoring those that don’t. The psalmist who…
Daily Devotions
You have heard that it was said…, ‘You shall not murder’; … But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement…” vss. 21a-22a Matthew 5:21-26 Imagine how the religious leaders of Judaism felt as word of Jesus’ teaching ministry traveled through the country. They had spent their lives defending the Law of Moses as God’s blueprint for living, and Jesus in his very first public pronouncements made a…
Daily Devotions
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…” vss. 21-22 Colossians 1:21-28 There are many people today who would just as soon eliminate the cross from the Christian faith. For them it’s bloody and gruesome, and reeks of a sacrificial theory of the atonement that they think we’d be better off without. They…
Daily Devotions
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” vss. 1-2 Luke 15:1-3 Even though Luke was writing many years after Jesus’ ministry he clearly understood the reasons for the tension that had arisen between Jesus and the religious leaders. By welcoming sinners and eating with them Jesus was undermining centuries of religious tradition and practice. He…
Daily Devotions
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” vs. 19 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 Most of us regularly and faithfully affirm our faith in Jesus as the Christ, and that’s a good and wonderful thing to do. But as we make our confession we should not imagine that Jesus was the first or only Christ–we simply cannot limit our understanding of Christ to Jesus…
Daily Devotions
When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.” vs. 4 Psalm 4:1-4 The psalmist is here advising his enemies to think twice about the harm they might intend to do to him. Rather than simply acting on their feelings and saying something they will regret, he says they should take to their beds, consider options and then be silent. This is timeless wisdom! Many of us are plagued by runaway tongues and end…
Daily Devotions
Matthew 18:15-17 … “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” vs. 15 By the time Matthew wrote his gospel the community of believers was pretty well established in the larger cities of the Roman Empire. Congregations weren’t large and there were no church buildings as we know them. Rather, believers would meet in homes,…