live2bless

I magine that you are training to be a woodworker. You are in a large shop with about 15 other students, but each of you is assigned to a master woodworker to be personally tutored by him. Presently you are side-by-side at the lathe with him. He’s working on half of the piece and you are beside him on the other half. He’s teaching you by having you duplicate whatever you see him doing on his end o...

At all times, absolutely everything you think, say, and do, directly or indirectly reflects and is even determined by the value that you place on the people that God has put in your life. Think of it this way: what matters most to you operates as the rudder in your life. And what you treasure is revealed when you are at liberty to think of whatever you will. That is where your heart is, and it is...

In Galatians 5:13-16 (NIV) we read, 13 “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16 So I say, walk by the Spi...

Here’s a well known passage of Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6 (CSB) 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways know him , and he will make your paths straight. You are likely more familiar with the translation that reads, “in all your ways acknowledge him.” But the translation I read from, the Christian Standard Bible, is here supplying a more...

Jesus said, “ you are my friends if you do what I command. ” What makes obedience so central to this friendship? Why is his every command so precious and indispensable?  Because whether directly or indirectly our obedience has to do with participating in his loving work in people’s hearts. Hence the extent of our obedience also reveals the extent of our awareness of another person’s value to...

In 2 Corinthians 4:6 we read, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Then, in Luke 19:10 Jesus tells us what he — the embodiment of God's glory— came to do:  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” I think it could be said that the essence of God’s glory the...

The reason God is by nature the locus of all power and authority to where his very presence influences everything for its maximum benefit, is because he is completely self-disregarding by nature. And God is always seeking to maximize the influence of his presence through you to where your presence also influences others to their benefit. The same condition applies: the more self-disregard you have...

See yourself on a ship in a terribly stormy sea. The wind is raging and waves are crashing on the sides of the ship and up and down it goes with the huge swells of water. Here’s the principle: to the precise degree that that ship is unsinkable under those conditions, you are unsinkable if you stay on board. Here’s the point: Knowing Jesus , and being one with him , makes you as unsinkable as Jesus...

In Matthew 6:22 Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” To what was Jesus referring to? Allow me suggest the following. What the eye is to the body, our primary motive is to the soul. Just as our...

Perhaps the biggest question any one of us ever asks is, Why am I here? Thankfully, the Bible is far from silent in answering that. And one of the most significant replies appears in Colossians 1:16 where with reference to Jesus we read, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have bee...

Have you ever wondered what makes sin and evil so repulsive? We know something is wrong just on the sheer basis that God says so. And, ideally, that should always be sufficient reason to avoid it. But I find added incentive in reminding myself of how utterly repulsive it is. Consider this. Nothing but the face of Jesus himself is so beautiful as a simple act of self-forgetful help. That is to say,...

In Acts 20:24 the apostle Paul wrote, “…I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” Notice how well the Apostle Paul had defined for himself his life goal. If we fail to cross the finish line of fulfilling God’s purpose for our lives, the reason may be quite simp...

A book I read in college put me on what has now been a lifelong quest to clearly define for myself my life purpose. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve written and rewritten it coupled with multiple versions and modifications. That’s because it has become more specific, on one hand, and more reflective of a deeper desire on the other. My latest version is perhaps the simplest so far: I desire to...

In Matthew 16:25 (NIV) we read that Jesus said, 25 “…whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Someone has said that ultimately, the only thing you take with you when you die is what you gave away. Think of it this way: when death comes, it takes everything you’ve got. And if all you have is what you’ve got then, sure enough, you lose everyth...

“In James 1:12-16 (NLT) we read, 12 “God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. 13 And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. 14 Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and d...

Here are four questions I asked myself today that I’d like to keep challenging myself with. Let me pass them on to you. Here they are: Do I really have anything better to think about than Jesus — his friendship and presence with me? What else could be so worthy of my attention? Do I really have anything better to do than to listen for his guidance and act on it? What could be wiser than that? Do I...

In Mark 12:30 and 31 Jesus gives us the two greatest commandments, the second of which is this, “‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” In other words, just as you help yourself get through a day with as little difficulty and inconvenience as possible in spite of how undeserving you know you are of anything going well for you, even so, help your neighbor — make his day a little less difficult and inco...

Consider a young man who’s a trainee on a bomb diffusing squad. A live bomb is in the dirt before him and now it’s his turn to follow the trainers instructions and diffuse it. How carefully do you suppose he’ll listen and do precisely what he’s told to do? In the same way, it’s usually our awareness of what’s at stake that determines how closely we pay attention the voice of Jesus. The more consci...

Jesus’ words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” imply that life’s greatest, deepest, most satisfying, joy is ultimately experienced not in being an object of Christ’s love, but an agent of it — in coworking with him in manifesting his love to others.

If you are standing beside someone and overhear them say, “well, it’s all over now.” What do they mean? The likelihood of it is that they were observing a situation that they hoped would turn out in a certain way. But then something happened that was big enough and bad enough to destroy their hope. One Christian writer — Timothy Keller — pointed out that, in the case of the disciples, the nail mar...

In Psalm 73:23, the psalmist says to the Lord, “I am always with you.” What does he mean by that? Consider this: you can have two people in a house, obviously in close proximity to each other, and yet they may not necessarily be “with” each other. Some of the Pharisees had the whole Old Testament memorized. They knew God’s word. But as Jesus made clear, many of them really were not with God . Many...

In John 17:3 in his prayer Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” One way we get to know God is to consider something we know he values and then asking the question, “Lord, why does that matter to you?” That sets us up to hear from God about it. And when we do hear then, in the matter in question, we go from understandin...

I think it could be said that we could live our whole lives completely carefree if all we knew and believed in the Bible was the first line of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.” If we ever do, why does it take a whole lifetime to enter into the perfect peace of that one statement? Perhaps it’s because temptation has such a subtle and deceptive way with us. Every temptation is fir...

If someone does something well that we are interested in doing, we seek to imitate how they do it. To seek to imitate them is to honor (and, in effect, glorify) them, and the more time and effort we commit to imitating them the more we are honoring/glorifying them. In Ephesians 5:1 we read, “…be imitators of God, as beloved children.” The word translated “imitate” comes from the greek word indicat...

“When the pain is gone, the opportunity is gone.” •The pain of dissatisfaction, disappointment, distress. •The pain of defeat, upheaval, loss. •The pain of frustration, temptation, betrayal. •The pain of disillusion, rejection, loneliness. •The pain of disorder, physical infirmities, abandonment. So what’s the opportunity? The opportunity to grow in a way that upon death will be gone forever. That...