sacrifice from john 15

[Saint] Valentine was a priest in Rome when Emperor Claudius II began his hostile reign. Valentine was arrested for performing Christian weddings. While imprisoned, Valentine befriended the jailer’s d...

In love . What does that even mean?  “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them.  I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See ...

In the 2008 Batman film, The Dark Knight , the Joker (played by Heath Ledger) tries to get Batman to reveal his identity by kidnapping and executing one citizen every day until he reveals himself...

An American pastor once asked an Indonesian missionary who works among Indonesians but with a different people group from his own, “Are you afraid you’ll get caught?” Christian mission work in Indones...

You may remember that in January of 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the icy Potomac River right after takeoff. While 74 passengers and crew perished, several were saved by the actions of a he...

A truly remarkable example of sacrificial courage took place in Folsom, New Mexico, in 1908. When a flood was racing toward the valley, a resident from the hills warned a local woman, S. J. Brooks, th...

In George Bernard Shaw’s play about Joan of Arc , as Joan faces her execution by burning, she addresses those in power who have condemned her: “I will now go to the common people and find comfort in ...

Jesus – Savior: Praise You. Thank You. We’d never have done what You did We’d never give up so much for someone else who cared so little about us. … and we can’t imagine anyone doing it for us. But Yo...

From what is common in all these expressions, we can extract the dictionary definition of sacrifice: “the surrender of something of value for the sake of something else.” That is a good definition, bu...

Valentine’s Day commemorates the date on which Valentine, a roman priest, was executed by order of Emperor Claudius II. Claudius II was embroiled in a number of wars and believed that married men mad...

During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Corrie ten Boom tried to enlist a pastor to help hide Jews. Showing him a Jewish baby in need of rescue, the pastor said “No. Definitely not. We could lo...

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier on a cot in a hospital. “You have lost an arm in the great cause,” he said. “No,” said the soldier with a smile. “I didn’t lose it–I gave it.” In that same way, Je...