christian living on Deposit

The word “sacrament” comes from the Latin word sacramentum. It was used in two ways at the time. First, it described the oath taken by soldiers in the Roman army. It was a sacred pledge of allegiance....

After striking a large deposit of gold, two miners in the Klondike gold rush were so excited about unearthing more and more gold each day that they neglected to store up provisions for the winter. The...

Spiritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus’s promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time… This stands in contrast to what I’ll call the “primitivism” of so much American Christia...

In his book, A Peculiar Glory , John Piper provides an illustration of the kind of faith we are called to. This is no “blind faith,” in which we are supposed to simply believe without using our minds...

Seal. You know the verb. You twist a jar lid to seal the pickles. You lick an envelope to seal the letter. You notarize the contract to seal the deal. Sealing declares ownership and secures contents. ...

One Sunday, an usher brought to me an offering plate holding a bacon biscuit that a college student had deposited in the morning offering. A little note attached said, “Silver and gold have I none, bu...

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purp...

Imagine that I go to a friend and say: “Don, I’m in trouble. I need to borrow $10,000. Would you lend me $10,000?” And Don says, “Sure. He lends me $10,000 and I understand that I now owe him $10,000....

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

Confess sin instantly.

Hold material goods and wealth on a flat palm and not in a clenched fist.

Think of a contract. Think perhaps of an employment contract or a memorandum of sale or an IOU. What you hold in your hand is a sheet of paper with a series of commitments written on it. This is what ...

A lack of generosity refuses to acknowledge that your assets are not really yours, but God's.

He who lays up treasures on earth spends his life backing away from his treasures. To him, death is loss. He who lays up treasures in heaven looks forward to eternity; he's moving daily toward his...

We may say that in the possession of the Spirit we who are in Christ have a foretaste of the blessings of the age to come, and a pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of the body. Yet we have only ...

“One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters.”

People go through three conversions: The conversion of their head, their heart, and their pocketbook. Unfortunately, not all at the same time.

Nor, indeed, can a man properly be said to save anything, if he only lays it up. You may as well throw your money into the sea, as bury it in the earth. And you may as well bury it in the earth, as in...

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

Memory is more indelible than ink.

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

Locked into captivity by an airplane seat, a kindly disposition of keeping a friend company, or a telephone connection, we become ex officio confessors to those with troubled consciences and traces, o...

Faith’s only function is to receive what grace offers.

Thou hast taken me into covenant with thee, for I am a baptized Christian, set apart for thee and sealed to be thine; thou hast laid me, and I have also laid myself, under all possible obligations to ...

Sam and Pam, two friends, both arrived in the United States as immigrants from the country of Quadora. Each one wanted to buy a house, and it so happened they each found one for sale by a certain weal...

Faith, thankfully, does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace.

God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.

Good Father, we thank you for inviting us to your table. You invite us to your heavenly feast, but we don’t show up to the party. Rather, we ignore your invitation, we get distracted by other work we ...

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.