“and if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out” Matthew 5:29 Stumble – This word is all about the cheese. Want to get rid of a mouse? Don’t have a cat? Then you will soon be at the store buying a mousetrap. But the trap won’t do any good at all unless you…
“A city on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:14 Hidden – There are a lot of secrets in the New Testament. There are secret thoughts (Romans 2:16), secret sins (2 Cor. 2:4), secret places (Luke 11:33), secret worship (Matthew 6:4) and secret treasures (Col. 2:3). But some things just can’t be kept secret. Some…
“O Lord, be gracious to me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against You.” Psalm 41:4 Sinned – We are a culture of lists. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have a “TO DO” list somewhere? We have lists for nearly everything, from grocery shopping to career building. Our thought patterns are conditioned by…
“He said, “Now take, ________, your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” Genesis 22:2 (Please) – It’s there in Hebrew, but nearly every English translation just leaves…
“I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” Luke 7:43 Suppose – Isn’t sarcasm grand? It says so much about the speaker. With just a word of sarcasm you can turn truth into pain, intimacy into fear or vulnerability into resistance. It’s such a useful tool. And it takes almost no training at all to…
“And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19 Make – There is a background to this word that changes its color. When we think of “make” in our culture, our first thought is usually related to some tangible product. We make buildings, cars and consumer products. …
“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” James 1:22 Delude – If James were alive today, he would be one of the world’s great consultants. He might even be on Oprah. People would flock to him for practical advice. But in the end, he would tell us the…
“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3 Grief – Has sorrow ever made you sick? Sometimes it doesn’t take a virus or toxic bacteria to make us ill. Sometimes all it takes is intense pain. Job had the right idea (Job 33:19). In this life,…
“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3 Forsaken – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But we know why, don’t we? God abandoned Jesus in that moment because of you and me. This word is really an adjective. It describes the character…
“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3 Despised – Until Mel Gibson’s movie brought the crucifixion to the screen in graphic detail, we languished in a culture that viewed the event as an important spiritual symbol but hardly an unspeakable evil. The Passion of the…
