What Girls Get Wrong

You may be familiar with the Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15:11-32 .   Basically, the younger of two sons asks his father to have his inheritance now, and then goes and wastes it.   When he is broke, eventually he repents of his foolishness and asks his father to take him on as a servant.   The father, being overjoyed that his son returned, throws a party for him.   There’s a lot of food, and everyone’s having a good time. Except the older brother. When he hears of it, the older brother gets mad, and won’t go in to the party or greet his brother.   He’s angry that his father has thrown a party for his foolish, sinful, wasteful brother.   Here he has been good, well-behaved, hard-working, and yet his brother’s getting a party, not him.   It doesn’t seem fair. Instead of rejoicing that his sinful brother has come to his senses, that he’s repented and reconciled to the family, the older brother feels cheated. He’s so much bett...

A lot of us want to do something big for God.   We feel like we’re not serving enough, not doing enough, and we want to push ourselves to do more for God and His kingdom. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that.   It is good to desire to serve God.   But I think we get it wrong with what exactly it means to serve God in a big way. Sometimes, serving in a big way means serving in little ways.   Sometimes doing great things for God means doing the small things. Take Ruth for instance. She is called a virtuous woman ( Ruth 3:11 ).   Her praises are sung by the local women.   These women call Naomi blessed to have such a daughter-in-law, better than “seven sons” ( Ruth 4:14-15 ).   Ruth is one of the most highly-praised women we read about in Scripture. What was this marvelous thing she did?   Surely she served God in a mighty way.   She must have had a three-album deal while being the soloist of her chur...

I've been thinking again about how much God loves us. His love is so strong, so pure, He's willing to watch us suffer. Let me explain what I mean. When things happen to us which are painful, we tend to beg and pray that God will resolve the problem quickly, or make it go away. The situation will be really difficult.  Someone we love will be dying.  We'll be down to our last ten dollars, our last rent money.  We'll be struggling with a health issue. We'll be in agony over it, and we let our human perspective blind us. We begin to doubt God, that He is good, that He cares about us or our situation. But the amazing thing, if we take the time to consider, is that God never stopped loving us, or caring about what we're going through.  The Bible is full of verses declaring His love for us. God loved us so much: 1. He sent Jesus to die for us ( John 3:16 ; 1 John 3:16 ).* 2. He calls us who have accepted Christ's sacrifice and Lordship His child...

Some time ago, I wrote a post about how dangerous it is to compare ourselves to others .  Whether your comparisons make you feel bad about yourself, or whether they cause you to feel superior to someone else, the comparing game causes pain. At least, when we're framing it in a me versus you format. Why did God include so many stories of people in the Bible?  If we shouldn't compare, why did He write of Esther and her courage, of Ruth and her diligence, of Tamar and her seduction, of Mary and her obedience, of Naomi and her bitterness? The Bible is ultimately the story of God, His creation, the first man and woman's betrayal, His undying love and sacrifice, and His rescue of mankind from their sin and complete victory over evil.  But along the way, we read of many people, both good and bad, both repentant and in denial. What was the reason for all of these stories?  Was it just to make the Bible longer?  Did God have a word count He wanted to hit, and so ...