christian living on Temptation

In The Good and Beautiful God , James Bryan Smith describes a new Christian he happened to know who came to him one day feeling dejected. He was so excited to be a follower of Jesus, but he just co...

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

It’s important, then, to have our eyes open to this deception. How is it that so many modern promises sound true but in the end lead to our deception, or even our destruction? A long, long time ago, t...

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

Lord God, we know that you are life, the life which is the light of the world But sometimes we allow the darkness to close in We find ourselves driven apart from you We confess that we do not ...

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am...

Heavenly Father, forgive us for delving so much into our own lives that we forget the love and purpose with which you have created us. When we are faced with doubt and despair, help us to turn to you ...

Solitude... keeps us from making judgments about other people’s sins. In this way real forgiveness becomes possible. The following desert story offers a good illustration: A brother . . . committed...

Spirit of Truth, as we turn to your Word, let the light of your countenance be upon us, that we may come to know more fully the one who is the way, the truth, and the life, through Christ Jesus, our...

We are forbidden to take sin more seriously than grace, or even as seriously as grace.

He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!

The psychotherapist M. Scott Peck spent many years of his practice as an agnostic. He, along with thousands upon thousands of his colleagues were taught that evil was a social construct, and therefore...

Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...

We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

We sometimes find God’s forgiveness to be offensive: “It reveals us to be distressingly like everyone else!” (And we are so special.)

All: Gracious God, you promise that your light drowns out darkness, yet the darkness is so persistent. We cannot see in front of us, so we look to our own knowledge and ways. Forgive us for turning to...

Salt and light are indispensable household commodities. Several commentators quote Pliny’s dictum that nothing is more useful than ‘salt and sunshine’ (sale et sole). The need for light is obvious. Sa...

God of power, love and wisdom: you’ve known us and loved us from before we even were, and extended your grace to us before we knew your name. You save us from ourselves – from our arrogance, rebell...

In these acts of love Jesus created a scandal for devout, religious Palestinian Jews. The absolutely unpardonable thing was not his concern for the sick, the cripples, the lepers, the possessed . . . ...

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

In these two little Illustrations, C.S. Lewis demonstrates how a life of discipleship, of following Jesus, does not lead to uniformity and a drab existence, but rather the opposite. Jesus takes our li...

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

Never doubt in the dark what God showed you in the light

Jesus reassures us that every effort to love ourselves and others more faithfully, however imperfectly we are able to do this, is a response to God's call to love as he loved. It is a response to ...

All who are called to salvation are called to discipleship, no exceptions, no excuses!

Dallas Willard gave a series of lectures on the kingdom of God. In one, he discussed the popularity of the phrase, “The truth will set you free” by putting it in its proper kingdom context: The whole...

Grace is not simply about pardoning sinful behavior; it’s also about rewiring the sinners themselves. The grace the Bible talks about is power not just for justification but also for transformation.