Forgive and be Forgiven As followers of Jesus, we shouldn’t judge others, but we do. Too often, we judge Christians for their theology. We must stop. When we evaluate others based on what they believe, we diminish them in the process. And we smugly elevate ourselves over them. When we do this, our egos show […]
Are You a Wise Guy? Do you possess wisdom? Are you wise? A wise guy? According to the dictionary, wisdom is “The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight; common sense; good judgment.” Now consider what James writes about wisdom. He writes “the wisdom that comes from heaven is first […]
The Tongue Is a Dangerous Tool that We Must Tame In one of his Psalms, David writes that he will be careful in what he says so that he doesn’t sin. He talks about putting a muzzle on his mouth (Psalms 39:1). He says nothing about having freedom of speech. James is clear about the […]
Do What You Can to Promote Peace In Jesus’s best-known sermon, which we call the Sermon on the Mount, he proclaims that “Blessed are the peacemakers.” They’ll be known as God’s children (Matthew 5:9). Though Jesus doesn’t explicitly command us to advocate for peace, he proclaims blessings on those who do. And the blessings are […]
Control Your Tongue and Watch Your Words There’s a saying of disputed authorship, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” As such, we need to be careful what we say. The Bible has much to share about our words and our tongue. Tame the Tongue James […]
We Demonstrate That We Follow Jesus through the Things That We Do I’ve written that we should treat love like a verb. I also suggested that we’ll do well to view Christian as a verb and not so much a noun (and certainly not an adjective). We should do the same thing with faith. Yes, […]
Be Careful What You Say Many people today—too many—feel they have a right to say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it. What they forget is that this privilege also comes with a responsibility to not say some things, to at times keep quiet. Just because we can say something, doesn’t […]
Be Careful Not to Judge Others Based on Who We Are or What We Do Over the years I’ve heard many people wonder out loud about the validity of another Christian’s faith based on what they do or some aspect of their life. Often this takes the form of, “Can you be a ______ and […]
Accepting What We’re Taught Without Scrutiny May Cause Us to Believe Things That Aren’t True In the book of Acts, Dr. Luke writes about the Jews that lived in the town of Berea. He called them people with a “more noble character.” What did they do to deserve this label of respect? This was due […]