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The holidays can bring back the empty chair, the family hurt, the memories of when everything felt joyful—and before long, sorrow and anxiety begin to take over. The words of Romans 8 help us in times when grief feels stronger than truth.
Rules, hypocrisy, conflict—those are the words people most often reach for when they describe the church, and if we’re honest, we’ve sometimes given them reason to. Galatians 5 doesn’t flinch from that indictment; it sets the works of the flesh against a vision of the church so different, so beautiful, that it could only come from one source.
Feeling anxious? God gets it. God meets us in our worries and assures us that He’s with us.
Have you ever spoken boldly about your faith, only to find yourself later asking if any of it is real? Even John the Baptist, who once pointed everyone to Jesus as the promised one, sends messengers in Luke 7 to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
We’ve all sensed it—a choice that seemed perfect in the moment, but leaves us listing further down the road. Matthew 7:24–27 presents two builders, two houses, nearly identical except for what lies beneath, and asks which foundation will hold when the rains come.
You can confess Jesus as Lord, cast out demons, do mighty works—and still hear him say, “I never knew you.” Matthew 7:21–23 cuts past everything we think proves we’re his followers, asking instead the question that actually matters: Does he know you?
Jesus warns in Matthew 7 that the most dangerous kind of false teaching comes from one dressed like a sheep. By the time you realize there’s a wolf underneath, it’s frighteningly close. How do we keep alert when such sounds deceptively good?
How do so many other people seem to fall for the “wide gate” of worldliness and we don’t? Or have we fallen for it and we don’t even realize it?
In our sinful human nature we’re all hypocrites—quick to see the masks on everyone else, almost never on ourselves. Jesus meets that very tendency in Matthew 7:12 with a rule most people already know by heart: whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.
Even after turning our lives over to Christ, we can still pray as though God were there to serve our wants and protect our plans. In Matthew 7, Jesus says, “Ask, seek, and knock,” raising a searching question for daily prayer: When we belong to Him, what should we be asking our Father to give?