Well, this is the last week this year, I pray it’s a blessed one!
Today’s Top Read:
Wonder: Is Wide-Eyed Fascination Still Possible After All These Years?
This is a fabulous read from the Illinois Baptist State Association, one that I have really fallen in love with!
“Our greatest sense of wonder may come not from considering 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way (that’s the number scientists say), but instead looking back through time to a single star over a solitary town that produced wonder the world has yet to fully comprehend. Maybe that which produces wonder is not so much “out there,” but in here. That this infinite God cares about lowly humans is a wonder.”
Little Ones Receive Power
“The beautiful irony is that when we admit our powerlessness, we invite God to be powerful for us in ways we could not have dreamt or imagined. God longs for us to accept his invitation for him to work on our behalf. He has provided his Holy Spirit as a counselor, a guide, a protector, an instructor (John 14:26, 16:13-15). The Holy Spirit is the one who will lead us in the way we should go, who will put the wisdom into our minds that we need, who will put words into our mouths so that we do not need to fear what we will say (Matthew 10:19-20).”
Never Forget Where You Came From
Tim Challies hits home here with this parable, if you will, about staying humble and remembering where you came from, even when where you’re at is a million miles away.
Born to Die
“e carried a debt to sin because we rebelled against God’s law. And Jesus set us free. He redeemed us. But how? In the only way he could, so that God could be just and the justifier at the same time. Jesus offered himself as the substitutionary sacrifice for our sin. He died the death we deserved so that God the just would be satisfied.”
Confessions of a Former People-Pleaser
“God is rightly and lovingly jealous for our first and fullest devotion. And every meaningful relationship we have will vie, whether overtly or subtly, to dethrone him. That’s why Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). Sin has a way of making the love and approval of people seem more thrilling and fulfilling than the love and approval of God.”