How do you deal with someone who feels their sins deeply?
I have met with young ladies who are scared because they are still in high school and now they are pregnant. She has no idea what she is going to do, how her parents are going to react, if the members in her church are going to shun her.
I have ministered to older men who have had an affair. He doesn’t know what to do. If he tells his wife, it will destroy her. If he keeps it hidden, it will eat him up inside.
You are fleeing persecution in your home country and trying to find safety for your family in a new land. The boat trip across the Mediterranean Sea is dangerous enough. But on this trip there are fifteen Muslim men who are bent on murdering Christians. This group of thugs approaches you. They ask you one simple question, “Are you a Christian?”
How do you respond?
We all know a bad smell when we come across one. Our nose may twitch once or twice before the full force of the smell hits us. Whether it is rotting food or being downwind of a pig farm or the hint a baby needs to be changed, our nose tells us that something unpleasant is nearby. We try to identify the source of the smell and remove the scent.
There was a lot of cheering going on this past week. After winning the Lutheran State Basketball championship, our WLS girls’ team went to Valparaiso University to play in the Lutheran Basketball National Tournament. They won the Consolation Championship! The way I look at it, that means they were the fourth best Lutheran girls’ grade school basketball team in the nation! Parents and family were cheering at the university or cheering from home as they watched the games online. It is especially cool to have the girls’ younger siblings cheering them on.
Countless centuries had passed since the rainbow was first set in the sky. After exiting the ark, God made a covenant with Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with a world-wide flood. Next God made a covenant promising Abraham that a great nation would be formed from his descendants in the promised land of Canaan. Two generations later, God made a covenant with Jacob that He would remember the covenant made with Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather.
Complaining, whining, grumbling, impatience – these were the constant refrains of God’s chosen people – the Israelites.
The Israelites had initially complained that they were trapped between the waters of the Red Sea and the fury of the Egyptian army. So God drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Then the Israelites had whined that they didn’t have any water to drink in the desert. So God allowed water to flow from a rock. Then the Israelites grumbled that they didn’t have any food to eat. So God sent bread from heaven every morning (except for the Sabbath) … but the people grew tired of the manna every day and grumbled about that, too. Then the Israelites disagreed with God’s estimation that they could overtake the huge people living in the promised land of Canaan.
Peter is one of the most fascinating and complex people in the Gospels. He’s loud and brash. He speaks his mind. He often leaps before he looks. He’s capable of tremendous insight and yet two seconds later can put both feet in his mouth. One moment he proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; the next he tries to keep Jesus from going to the cross. One moment he says he doesn’t want Jesus to wash his feet; the next he’s wanting a complete bath. That’s Peter—wonderful heights of insight and intellect or falling flat on his face in front of everyone.
What a sight it must have been! Three months after the Israelites left Egypt they were camped at the foot of a mountain in the Sinai Desert. Through Moses the Lord told the children of Israel that He was going to make a covenant – a solemn promise – with them. If they would now obey Him fully and keep His covenant, then out of all the nations they would be His treasured people (Exodus 19:5). To this all the people responded with one voice, “We will do everything the Lord has said” (Exodus 19:8).