Too many of us don’t really understand what forgiveness is. I’m convinced that if more people knew what real forgiveness looked like, they’d be much more willing to forgive instead of holding on to past hurts at an unhealthy level.
Many people, including Christians, think they only have to show respect for people with whom they agree. Nothing could be further from the truth! In today’s world, there are many activities in our society that I, as a believer, dislike and actions I clearly disagree with.
We can come up with many excuses for overworking. Sometimes we blame it on needing to provide for our family. Other times we insist our work is so important that to slow down would be negligent.
I’ve talked to hundreds of people about why they don’t fully trust God. Usually it’s one of three things: People are afraid that if they give their lives fully to God, they’ll lose their freedom, they’ll lose their fun, or God will turn them into some kind of religious fanatic.
See MoreWhen you want to repair a relationship where there is conflict, you have to focus on reconciliation, not resolution.
When you feel pressured by the world because you love Jesus and other people don’t, you need to remember three things:
When you meet someone to resolve a conflict, you first have to confess your part of the problem. Then you need to listen for the other person’s hurt and perspective.
I wonder how many people wake up thinking, “I get to exercise today!” I certainly don’t. But I do know that we all need both physical and spiritual exercise. I also know this about exercise: I want the most benefit I can get out of every minute I exercise, whether it’s physical or spiritual.
Integrity demands that every area of your life be treated with the same intensity. You have the same commitment to excellence in your marriage as you do in your career. You have the same commitment to excellence in ministry as you do in your parenting.
Cultures around the world are absolutely obsessed with appearance and image. They’re scooting by, they’re skimming, and they’re cheating. They’re not keeping their promises. They’re pretending to be someone they’re not. They don’t have integrity. In other words, they’re hypocrites.
Would you like to see your relationships transformed? Then become an agent of mercy.
Are you hungry for God? It’s possible to maintain a spiritual hunger for God for the rest of your life. Here are five ways to sustain a spiritual appetite.
When you pray, it turns your attention toward God and helps you to see that he is bigger and more powerful than any of your concerns. And as you watch God answer your prayers, your faith deepens.
Grief, loss, and pain are inevitable parts of life. But did you know that God uses these things to help you grow? He does it in three ways.
If you’re going to make a fresh start with faith in your life, you need to face your fears. Don’t let them control you! Fear has an incredible ability to paralyze our potential—to keep us from launching out and having faith in our lives.
In Mark 10, a huge crowd was following Jesus as he left Jericho. A man named Bartimaeus was blind and begging by the roadside. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47 NIV).
Here’s a surprising truth: You can have faith and doubt at the same time.
When you were a kid, you had a great imagination. But the older you get, the more your imagination grows rusty. You stop imagining the way things could be, and you just start living the way they are. You get stuck in the status quo.
God’s timing is perfect, even when we can’t understand it. We’ll never fully understand God’s timing because God exists on a different wavelength. Because he is timeless, he has a different view of time.
You are never a failure until you quit, and it’s always too soon to quit. God uses tough times to test your persistence.
Philippians 4:19 is an amazing and all-encompassing promise regarding God’s provision: “You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus” (MSG).
The Bible teaches that God is the source of our finances. He is the one who provides for our needs.
God wants to bless your life and then watch you bless other people’s lives with the same benefits he gives to you. In fact, one condition for answered prayer is a willingness to use God’s blessings to help those less fortunate.
Whatever problems you’re facing, you need to remember that God is working behind the scenes. You need to trust him and be patient.
Being on a broken planet means you will never outgrow temptation. But it’s important to remember that it’s not a sin to be tempted. It’s a sin to give in to temptations. You’re not a bad Christian because you have persistent temptations in your life. You’re human!
Sometimes you’re going to need an “emergency kit” for temptation.
If you want to be able to fight the persistent temptations in your life, you need to know what makes you vulnerable to Satan’s efforts.
You can’t defeat temptation if you don’t understand how it works.
None of us are immune to persistent sins. Some people struggle with anger, while others wrestle with worry or gossip or lust.
You don’t plant apple seeds and get tomatoes.
Sin may be secret, but it’s never private. It will either come out now, here on earth, or at Judgment Day, but it’s going to be known.
At the root of every sin rests at least a momentary doubt about God.
A lot of things that are true won’t set you free. You can learn how to program a computer, but that won’t set you free. You could read all the latest self-help books, but that won’t set you free either.
Have you ever felt like you are a hostage to your thoughts? Maybe you just can’t get a thought out of your mind. Or you often find yourself doing things you don’t want to do. You knowingly engage in self-defeating behavior. You know something is not good for you, but you do it anyway.
The more of God’s Word you get into your mind, the more defenses you will have against persistent temptation.
Millions of saints before you have sat in God’s waiting room. You’re not alone! In fact, if you’re in the waiting room right now—maybe you’re waiting on a job, on an answer, or on a result—there are a lot of people around you who are in that same situation.
There is an unseen battle going on in a realm that we don’t even understand, a spiritual war in other dimensions between good and evil, between God and Satan, between angels and demons—and you’re caught right in the middle. If you’re a child of God, Satan hates you. And he wants to mess you up.
Do you ever feel like you’re waiting on God? Maybe you can’t relate to the Israelites, who wandered in the desert for 40 years while they were waiting on God to deliver them. But you feel like God has you on hold. He hasn’t given you the answer or the deliverance you wanted or expected.
Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and across the wilderness to the Promised Land. It should have only taken them a few weeks, even with a large crowd. But it took them 40 years.
When you become a person of faith, you learn to give according to what God tells you to give. You don’t limit what you give by deciding, “This is what I think I can reasonably give.” That kind of giving doesn’t require any faith.
There are some things you will never learn on your own. You only learn them in community. To grow and develop your potential, you must learn from other people.
You’ll never learn who you really are by yourself. You only learn it in relationships. That means you must connect with other people for fellowship.
Do you think that every day a farmer wakes up excited to go to work on their farm? No. It’s hard work! But if a farmer only worked their crops when they felt like it, not much would get done. They may not want to get up early. They may not want to go plant and weed and cultivate and harvest. But they do it anyway.
Years ago PBS did a series of family histories of famous Americans. They wanted to include a pastor, so they asked me if I would participate. They took a swab of DNA from my mouth, and they used it to trace my family tree back a thousand years. They didn’t discover that I’m the descendent of kings, but they found all kinds of interesting things and compiled it for a TV special.
You may think you were created to get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, and go to bed, to make a little money, retire, and die. Really? You think that’s all God put you here for?
I used to think this wasn’t a big deal. But I’ve realized that for most people, the number one problem in life isn’t worry or fear or guilt or bitterness. Their number one problem is weariness.
Too many of us don’t really understand what forgiveness is. I’m convinced that if more people knew what real forgiveness looked like, they’d be much more willing to forgive instead of holding on to past hurts at an unhealthy level.
Many people, including Christians, think they only have to show respect for people with whom they agree. Nothing could be further from the truth! In today’s world, there are many activities in our society that I, as a believer, dislike and actions I clearly disagree with.
We can come up with many excuses for overworking. Sometimes we blame it on needing to provide for our family. Other times we insist our work is so important that to slow down would be negligent.
I’ve talked to hundreds of people about why they don’t fully trust God. Usually it’s one of three things: People are afraid that if they give their lives fully to God, they’ll lose their freedom, they’ll lose their fun, or God will turn them into some kind of religious fanatic.
Our minds control everything else about us. Our thoughts influence our feelings. And our feelings impact our actions.
What’s the easiest thing for you to lose? Your glasses? Your keys? Your mind?
You’ve heard the saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That’s true—but it’s only part of the story. You can learn a lot by looking at your past—but you can’t heal the most pervasive, costly wounds in your life by focusing only on your past. To defeat those giants, you’ll have to look ahead.
People really don’t forget anything. Stored somewhere in your mind, you’ll find the date of your anniversary, the score of the Super Bowl when you were 10, and the day your child lost his first tooth.
When you focus on your problems instead of trusting God, you’re going to end up exhausted and defeated—because God didn’t design you to fight your battles alone. You don’t have the power you need to face every problem in your own strength. You need God’s power.
Life includes times when you feel like you’re in an impossible situation, when you feel like you’re being attacked from all sides. That’s what happened to Israel’s King Jehoshaphat, who prayed to God when he faced armies from three different nations. To get through those times, you need to learn how to model your prayers after Jehoshaphat’s so that you can get relief.
God has promised to “meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 NIV). But with every promise there is a condition. God wants you to learn to trust him more so that he can meet your needs and bless your life.
God has promised to give you peace of mind. In fact, one of God’s names is Jehovah Shalom, which means, “I am the God of peace.”
Have you lost your joy? First, you need to admit to yourself that you’ve lost it. And then you need to analyze the cause. Look at your life and ask yourself, “How did I lose my joy? What has robbed me of my joy?”
You only have a certain amount of emotional energy. When you’re trying to resolve conflict, you can use that energy either to fix the blame or to fix the problem. You don’t have enough energy to do both. So you need to ask yourself what’s more important—to blame the other person or to resolve the conflict.
When someone is angry with you, it’s easy to show anger in return. But before you allow yourself to get mad back, calculate what you’re going to lose. Calculate the cost of anger.
Wise people are peacemakers, not troublemakers. Wise people don’t carry a chip on their shoulder. They’re not always looking for a fight. And they don’t intentionally antagonize other people.
God is the source of everything. He made everything you see in the world—and everything you can’t see in the world and in the universe.
Do you ever wonder if prayer really works? Maybe you’re praying about something and Satan whispers to you, “This is a waste of time. Forget it! Who do you think you are? God is not listening.”
When you have conflict, focus on reconciliation, not resolution.
Prayer has the power to transform your year and that’s why we hope you’ll request a copy of the brand-new Daily Hope Prayer Journal!
This year’s theme, Resting in the Great I Am, will help you experience more of God’s presence in the year ahead as you learn to pray with greater passion and purpose.
Request your Daily Hope Prayer Journal: Resting in the Great I Am when you give below, knowing your gift will be DOUBLED by the $100,000 Match to help reach more people with the hope of Jesus in 2025.
