Good morning! The mind is a powerful thing. What you think on is extremely important. The thoughts you keep will be the thoughts that direct your life and develop your belief system. Be careful what thoughts you keep. You have the choice of what thoughts you let stay in your mind. You can't stop the thoughts from coming, but you can keep them from staying. It's not the thoughts that come and go, but the thoughts that come and stay that are pivotal for your life. What thoughts

Good morning! One way we really need God's wisdom is in relationships. Oftentimes, people rush into a situation without praying, taking some deep breaths and thinking about the situation first. Leading by emotions can make a mess into a disaster. When someone sins, take time to asses the situation and pray. Don't have a knee-jerk reaction to it. If you consider yourself spiritual, then be gentle and remember the goal is not to beat someone down with words, but to restore them

Good morning! I cannot tell you how many times I've needed wisdom in situations and didn't ask for it. The result was bad decisions that wasted a lot of resources and put me in situations that could have been avoided if I had just asked for wisdom. Can you relate? On the flip side, when I have asked for wisdom, God has given me insight beyond what I should know for my age or intelligence level. Now, we can't ask for selfish things like we just found a genie in a bottle and no

Good morning! I remember being a kid and wanting something I saw in a store. My parents would say, "no" usually because I didn't need it or they didn't have the money. Whatever the reason, I would keep asking, nagging, prying, pestering and persisting them to get it for me. Eventually, I would get whatever it was. Sometimes sooner than later and other times way after I asked for it. I kept asking my parents because I believed I would eventually get what I asked for and that t

Good morning! Oftentimes, when someone wrongs us, we want justice and revenge. We want them to hurt like they hurt us. But we must be careful. If you sow revenge, do you think you will reap righteousness? We must let God avenge His own and leave room for His justice. If you seek to justify your behavior, you prove yourself to be a lawbreaker (Galatians 2:17-18). If we seek to do fleshly things, we will end up in destruction. If we seek to live for God by the Holy Spirit, we w

Good morning! I recently preached at a youth rally in Ashland, OH. There were a lot of people who were struggling with turmoil and being hated for their faith. During the message, The Lord prompted me to say something profound. It wasn't my thought, He gave it to me in the moment. It was, "If God loves you, then why worry about who hates you?" So often, we spend so much time thinking and worrying about who hates us rather than God who loves us so deeply. Jesus promised in thi

Good morning! So often, people do the opposite and treat people how they get treated. Jesus tells us to live differently by doing to people what we want them to do to us. We treat people with respect, dignity and love regardless of how they treat us. Why? Because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We deserved to be on the cross, yet Jesus, who never sinned, took our place. He didn't wait for people to repent, He didn't wait for people to treat Him like the Messiah

Good morning! This passage is very often misquoted and taken out of context. Many interpret it to say, "God will never give you more than you can handle." That's not what it says nor what it means. The distinction is important. First, we are all tempted by three categories of sin. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. The details of what tempts us may be different, but the categories of sin are the same. Temptation can be overwhelming, but God is

Good morning! To live in the truth and walk according to the Spirit is the best way to be a walking witness of Jesus Christ. The evidence of living differently than everyone else will cause people to take notice. How can we be different? The world complains about everything. It wants its own way all the time. It argues about everything even to the point of violence when someone dares to disagree. As disciples, stop complaining, but rather pray for God to intervene His will in

Good morning! When you fill your life with the truth, you experience a freedom the world can't give or take away. You never know what you are carrying until you are no longer carrying it. You get used to the load you carry. When you put off everything and put on Jesus, you realize how light His burden really is. When you fill your life with the word, you learn to walk according to the Spirit. If you walk according to the Spirit and not the flesh, you live in freedom. Sin beco

Good morning! The goal for believers should be to become disciples. To believe doesn't mean to follow. Many people say they believe, but they don't follow Jesus. To be called a Christian in the first century was not a badge of honor, it was a derogatory term for believers. Is there enough evidence of your walk to be termed a Christian by unbelievers? In order to be a disciple, you have to walk according to the word. Jesus equates obedience to Him as love for Him. Do you love

Good morning! I don't understand when someone says they love God, but they hate someone, especially in the church. It's an oxymoron. Believers are called the body of Christ. We are members of Him that make a complete body. How can a finger hate a toe? Or a rib hate the liver? Sounds strange, perhaps, but think about it. If we love God, how can we hate a member of His Son's body? We can all find reasons not to like things about each other. But true love from God covers a multi

Good morning! We are new creatures in Christ and given position and authority in the kingdom to do good works. We are not saved by these works, but do them in response to the good work Christ did in us to make us new. We've been reconciled to God through Christ. As we have been reconciled, we have a ministry of reconciliation to help others know the truth and come to repentance and salvation in Christ. We are God's ambassadors pleading the case of heaven over the lost souls o

Good morning! Whoever puts their faith in Christ, becomes a child of God regardless of their ethnicity, background, nationality, heritage or family tree. Christ makes us all one in Him and grants us the right to be children of God. What a privilege! All have sinned and all need Jesus to cleanse us of those sins. Regardless of who we are, we all suffer with the human condition of sin. But thanks be to God for His Son, Jesus who has shed His blood as payment for the penalty of

Good morning! When you live for Jesus and He is your everything, you have an unparalleled relationship with the living God. He is on your side because you are for Him. You can call out to Him in distress and He will hear and answer you. He is our shield and defender. If we could just really understand how powerful He is, we would never fear. When God is for you, who can really threaten you? God fights for you and protects you. When I realized He fights for me, the spirit of f

Good morning! God would not call us to live holy if it wasn't possible for us and if it wasn't important for us. He is calling us to live in His likeness and imitate the quality of His nature. He is apart from everything else in all of creation because He needs nothing besides Himself to exist. He wants us to trust in Him, let Him be the source of our lives and work through us by His Spirit to live differently than the rest of the world. To be holy means to be set apart for s

Good morning! Whatever the desire of your heart is will be reflected by what you truly love and value. If all your energy, time, thoughts, ambitions and investments are all in earthly things, you have temporary treasure that has a shelf life. Eventually, everything wears out, breaks down, loses value, is used up or loses its usefulness. But when we desire the things of heaven, no one can steal it from you. It won't wear out or break down. It is eternal. Think about that... Ho

Good morning! The world makes it very hard to have integrity today. It makes sin very accessible. At the tap of a screen, you can pull up just about anything at any time. We have to be intentional about doing good and abstaining from evil. It starts with our relationship with Jesus. If that isn't pure, nothing else in our life will have purity. If Jesus isn't the center of our lives, then we will make every excuse for why we can't stop sinning or to justify our sin. Seek good

Good morning! Because of Christ, we have been made children of God when we put our faith in Him. We are dear children, beloved and given grace in place of judgment. Because we are so loved, we should walk in love as we have been loved. We should walk in the love of God as imitators of Him who loved us. What does that love look like? It looks like holiness married with grace and mercy. It is uncompromising and untainted from the world's idea of love. The world tells us love sh

Good morning! Until you have a revelation of Christ as Lord of all, you will never truly be sober-minded. You will be in a delusion from the lies of the enemy. That's a dangerous place to be because you are gambling with eternity. What you believe about Jesus Christ determines how and where you will spend eternity. If you truly believe, trust and live for Him, you will live forever in heaven. If you do not, you will exist in a constant state of dying in the lake of fire. I k