From a personal vantage point it often seems best not to deal with bad behaviour. The humiliation of acknowledging our own bad behaviour, or the perceived consequences to ourselves in addressing the bad behaviour of others, often results in endless relational headache. From a more objective vantage point, we know that we ought to change […]
Godliness can be very complex or very simple
Our situations in life often require different kinds of counsel. Sometimes all we need is a “Just do it!” or “Stop it” command, other times we need a long and very detailed set of instructions to fulfil our daily responsibilities before God. The same is true of God’s counsel to us. We are taught in […]
God is not vindictive
We know that God is against the wicked and will condemn them for all eternity, but at times we feel God is against us who believe too and holds every little sin and foolish decision against us. God is not vindictive. God does not promise “No Condemnation!” (Rom 8:1) and still somehow make us suffer […]
When your sin makes you depressed
One of the songs sung on the way to the annual feasts in Jerusalem was Psalm 130. You might wonder what festival singing has to do with the guilt over your own sin, and this is where Psalm 130 provides a very important answer. Before you can joyfully come to worship, you need the guilt […]
Verses for all those emotions
Emotions send us all over the place. They might not be inherently evil, but the more we listen to our feelings, the more we get into trouble. By reading the Scriptures one quickly realises that it is like a giant app for emotions. Open the Scriptures, find the emotion you are feeling right now, click […]
Glimmers of hope in genealogies of death
Curiosity is the mother of all learning, and that is certainly true in your reading of God’s Written Word. It is often the most unexpected chapters in Scripture that fill us with a sense of meaning and purpose in this life. Genesis chapter 5 is one of those chapters. From verse 3 to verse 32, […]
The X on your treasure map
Jesus illustrated the Christian life as a treasure map where X marks the spot where your heart is. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where […]
The goodness of God’s goodness
Psalm 119:68 affirms unequivocally that God is good. The necessarily conclusion is equally profound: God does good. Nothing that God has ever done is bad, and nothing that is bad has ever been done by God. You are good and do good Psalm 119:68a (ESV) Since this truth about God is often the first thing […]
Singing during disaster
Nobody feels like confident singing when calamity strikes. But Psalm 46 is a three-stanza song for the worst of disasters. The first stanza starts with the most comforting truth about God during disaster, but ends with what would certainly be in the top three natural disasters of history. “God is our place of safety and […]
Dead people tell no tales
Used as a way to protect themselves from being betrayed, criminals justify the killing of a possible traitor with the statement “dead men tell no tales”. That is certainly true: dead people cannot tell of all your evil deeds. In Psalm 30, King David uses the same concept of “dead people tell no tales”, but […]