Carefully Consider What You Ask of God Each Day When You Pray When Jesus’s disciples asked him to teach them how the pray, he gave them a prayer (Luke 11:1-4). Though many people recite this prayer exactly as the Bible records it (also see Matthew 6:9-13), a better approach is to use this prayer—often called […]
The Bible Tells Us to Live a Life of Contentment Though some people in our world struggle to have the basic requirements for life, many others enjoy an existence that meets all their needs and beyond. This is a given for many people in most developed nations. They don’t need to seek God for their […]
The Broken Bread at the First Communion Represented Jesus’s Body The phrases breaking bread, break bread, and broke bread only appear in the New Testament. And they only show up eleven times, appearing in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, and 1 Corinthians. Should we understand this idea of breaking bread as a euphemism for Communion or […]
The Story of Zacchaeus There was a man in Jericho who was boss of the people who collected taxes. He was quite rich. He wanted to catch a glimpse of Jesus, but couldn’t because he was a short rascal and the taller people blocked his view. Ever resourceful, he ran ahead of the throng and […]
Our Perspective on What it Means to Follow Jesus Shapes How We Think and Act I’ve met people so fixated on heaven that they squander their time here on earth. Not only do they miss the opportunities before them, but they also offer a negative example to the world of what it means to be […]
When the nation of Israel was in the desert between Egypt and the land God promised to give them, stuck in time-out, they needed something to eat. God supernaturally provided a substance called manna. It sustained them for forty years while in the Sinai Peninsula. Although the Bible describes manna, the explanation leaves me wanting. […]
Jesus taught his disciples to ask God for their daily bread, that is, the food they needed for the day. Just as God provided manna for the Israelites in the desert, the implication is God will meet our needs each day. We are not to ask for enough for the week, the month, or the […]
When the nation of Israel was in the desert, God provided food for them each day. The Israelites called it manna and it miraculously appeared every morning. The manna would provide them with the sustenance they needed for that day. If they tried to gather extra and stockpile it, it would turn bad (except for […]