As part of the pastoral prayer on Sunday, I prayed through Psalm 133. Though a short psalm, the words were actually given by God through his inspired Scripture writers to be used by the people of Israel in prayer and in worship. Those two original purposes still extend to today; as Christians, we should be using the…
In our recent look at 1 Kings 19:1-21, I mentioned that escaping hopelessness often requires, by faith, going against what you feel like doing. One of the strongest impulses for the depressed person is the impulse to do nothing. The person feels unable to face life and so retreats into sorrow or indulgent activities. But…
As this week’s follow-up to the recent sermon, let’s consider how King Saul is a negative example of what Jesus describes in Matthew 6:25-34. King Saul was certainly a man filled with worry. Saul became anxious about approaching Philistine hordes when his own army was scattering (1 Samuel 13:8, 11); Saul worried about his people’s displeasure…
One truth that certainly emerges from Matthew 5:21-26 (see recent sermon) is that God really cares about how we treat those made in his image. We are not to murder those made in God’s image (Genesis 9:6), nor should we even be sinfully angry with people or speak evil of them. James 3:9-10 further says,…