2025-05-15
Luke 23:34 KJV
Some societies in history punished those who committed adultery by making them wear a big scarlet letter A, publicly identifying with their behaviour. And if you were caught stealing, they made you drag a ball and chain around. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, they deserved it.” Really?
Jesus said if you simply lust after someone, you have committed adultery in your heart (See Matthew 5:28). Then He went on to say the standard of judgment you impose on others is the same standard you will be judged by (See Matthew 7:1-2). God is not soft on sin; notice two things: (1) He won’t just overlook your sin. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6 NIV). (2) He won’t turn His back on you. Nothing can separate us from the love of God (See Romans 8:38-39). We don’t use scarlet letters or balls and chains today, but we use computers.
So, when someone hurts you, God says we must forgive them and delete it! Otherwise, it will influence the way we think, act, and talk. Plus, it will keep us tied to old, painful memories. “But forgiving them is hard,” you say. That’s why Jesus said to pray for those who mistreat you (See Matthew 5:44). Forgiving someone begins with praying for them. You say, “But I need to understand why they did it.” Wise people do foolish stuff, good people do bad stuff, and misguided people don’t know what they’re doing. Jesus prayed for those who crucified Him, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Someday you may understand what motivated your offender. But even if you don’t, forgive them and delete it.
Soul food: 1 Ki 1-2; Mark 7:14-23; Ps 88:9b-18; Prov 11:27-29
2025-05-14
2 Chronicles 14:11 ESV
Faced with an enemy he couldn’t conquer on his own, King Asa prayed, “Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us…we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.’ The Lord struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah” (vv. 11-12 NIV).
F. B. Meyer writes: “Remind God of his entire responsibility. ‘There is none like thee to help.’ The odds against Asa were enormous. There were a million men in arms… beside three hundred chariots. It seemed impossible to hold his own against that vast multitude. There were no allies who would come to his help: his only hope therefore was in God. There was none beside to help. It may be that your difficulties have been allowed to come to so alarming a pitch that you may be compelled to renounce all creature aid, to which in lesser trials you have had recourse, and cast yourself back on your Almighty friend. Put God between yourself and the foe.
To Asa’s faith, Jehovah seemed to stand between the might of Zerah and himself, as one who had no strength. Nor was he mistaken… the Ethiopians were destroyed before the Lord, and before His host, as though celestial combatants flung themselves against the foe on Israel’s behalf… Our God is Jehovah of Hosts, who can summon unexpected reinforcements at any moment to the aid of his people. Believe that he is there between you and your difficulty, and what baffles you will flee before him as clouds before the gale.”
Soul food: Heb 11:17-13:25; Mark 7:1-13; Ps 88:1-9a; Prov 11:24-26
2025-05-13
Jeremiah 2:13 NLT
We are desirous by nature. We keep desiring things just like we keep taking our next breath. The trouble is, when we get the things we crave, they don’t bring us the happiness we yearn for. So, we keep looking for more and more things. Online stores are in the business of “creating need.” Things we had assigned to our “want” category are switched to our “need” category.
But according to a theologian, here is the problem: “We cannot get enough of what we do not need… No matter how much we have, we remain ‘not-enough’ people. For not-enough people, there exists no lasting soul satisfaction. I saw an ad that featured the tagline ‘yesterday I didn’t know it existed; today I can’t live without it.’ [It’s called] the myth of more, the myth that one day more will be enough. If we believe this myth, we spend our lives looking for the next thing. It might be a car, or a promotion, or the love of a beautiful woman or handsome man. It might be, depending on your age, an iPod, or a Lamborghini, or a Tickle Me Elmo doll. We keep hoping that the next thing will be it – the source of true satisfaction for our souls. For a few minutes, or perhaps days, we experience true soul satisfaction. Then it wears off. It always wears off.”
Understand this: Only Jesus can satisfy; everything else disappoints. God said, “My people have done two evil things: they have abandoned me – the fountain of living water. And… dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” If you are tired of living an empty life, come to Jesus. He won’t disappoint you.
Soul food: Heb 9:1-11:16; Mark 6:45-56; Ps 75; Prov 11:23
2025-05-12
Ephesians 6:4 NIV
Parenting doesn’t end when your child becomes a teenager. Teens are just more mobile, spend less time with you, and are more independent. Now they value and emulate peers who are as immature as they are. Even when you have laid moral and spiritual foundations in their early years, something will happen that leaves you asking, “What happened? Where did I go wrong?” Adolescence happened!
It’s the teenager’s brain; it’s wired that way. Their frontal lobes – the part of the brain linked to moral development, emotional reactivity, impulse control, and decision-making – aren’t fully developed yet. Their frontal lobes won’t finish growing before their twenties, and sometimes later.
Meantime, what happened to all those Bible stories and your efforts to build godly beliefs into them? It’s all in there, temporarily lost in those budding lobes! They aren’t bad or stupid, though they sometimes seem to act that way. They haven’t abandoned your teachings. The belief systems you helped them construct earlier are not erased – they have been transferred to a “holding file” until their new sanity-restoring brain cells arrive. And they will!
Your job is to avoid panic, pray and allow God to work on them, love them unconditionally, and be their anchor. Stand firm, and live by your principles. Demonstrate empathy, but teach them how their decisions affect others. Help them learn self-control by letting them deal with their consequences! Be patient, supportive, and never give up on them. You have sown the seed of God’s Word into them, and “at just the right time [you] will reap a harvest of blessing if [you] don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9 NLT)!
Soul food: Heb 5-8; Mark 6:30-44; Ps 18:30-50; Prov 11:22
2025-05-11
Proverbs 22:6 KJV
Training your child is both challenging and rewarding. By shaping their underlying belief system, you help their developing brain establish permanent neural pathways that will guide their moral and spiritual growth. Neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, authors of Born to Believe, tell us the most crucial years are from age seven to ten. That’s when your child has the greatest propensity to understand the concept of a God they can’t see, feel, or hear. What an ideal opportunity!
Newberg and Waldman also suggest that our most effective tool for belief building at this stage is storytelling, not preaching or moralizing. Stories that incorporate godly principles, moral behaviours, courage, faith, love, compassion, and forgiveness are welcomed, easily digested ingredients for building Christian character.
Storytelling was how God instructed the Israelites to teach their children His ways and Word. Stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Daniel, Esther, Samson, Ruth, and David; of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection; of Jesus walking on the sea, raising the dead, and feeding the five thousand, stir the hearts, interest, and imagination of young children and impart enduring, life-changing principles! In fact, studies show that the belief systems of adults are powerfully influenced by stories they heard growing up.
Implant stories that will become the underpinning for their character and the basis for a lifetime of faith. As a parent, it’s your job to encourage and stimulate their developing brain toward godly beliefs, decisions, and lifestyle!
Soul food: Exo 20:13; Gen 4:1-15; Matt 5:21-22
2025-05-10
Romans 8:1 KJV
Once we understand that God’s love for us is based on what Christ did for us rather than what we do ourselves, the struggle is over. Now we can stop “performing,” and we can serve God because we know He loves us and that we don’t need to try to make Him love us. We no longer fear rejection by Him because of our mistakes. When we do something wrong, now all we do is repent, receive God’s forgiveness, and then refuse the condemnation that sin brings. Realizing we are loved and accepted even though we’re imperfect is such a relief!
Serving God out of desire rather than obligation is incredibly liberating! The moment you place your trust in Christ, God sees you as righteous from that point on. He doesn’t accept you because of your performance but because of your relationship with Him through Christ. And you need to decide to believe it and stand on it.
A noted minister writes: “We become what we believe we are; therefore, as we become convinced that we are right with God, our behaviour will improve. We will do things right and with less effort. No matter what other people may have told you that you are not, God delights in telling you in His Word who you are in Him – loved, valuable, precious, talented, gifted, capable, powerful, wise, and redeemed. Take a moment and repeat those nine things aloud. Say, ‘I am loved, valuable, precious, talented, gifted, capable, powerful, wise, and redeemed.'”
That’s how God sees you, and it’s how you need to start seeing yourself.
Soul food: Heb 1-4; Mark 6:14-29; Ps 18:1-29; Prov 11:19-21
