In the meantime

Have you ever stopped to think about what it will be like to "stand in glory and see His face?"   1 John 3:2 says that when we are in His presence, we will see Him as He is. We will see Him in all of His glory, beauty, and holiness.  I can't think of anything more precious, glorious, and indescribable to fill my sight.  Gold streets and private mansions are for later...much, much later.   That moment when our faith will be sight, when we see Him face to face, the God in whose name we, by faith, have trusted in, declared, suffered for, and worshiped — oh, it will be indescribably and unfathomably glorious. There will be no more need for the purifying hope of being in His presence: we will be in His presence.   And we will be forevermore. Can you even begin to wrap your mind around what it will be like to be in His very presence ? What will it be like to worship Almighty God for all of eternity?  I think we may sta...

God is trustworthy.  This begs us to ask questions such as "Why do we trust God?" "Why should we trust God?" "Is He really altogether worthy of our complete trust?" "Is trusting Him a crutch for our weaknesses?" "When we trust God, are we simply falling back on Him as our last resort?"  In light of these questions, here are a few thoughts about trusting God and His trustworthiness:   Consideration #1: If we are going to "trust God" we must understand the God in whom we're trusting.   In other words, if we're trusting God without knowing what He is like, we are blindly trusting Him, and I would suggest that such trust is not trust at all.  Take, for example, a chair.  If I trust in a chair, what does that mean?   It means that I know what a chair is.  I understand the purpose of the chair.  I understand the character of the chair to be such that it will hold me up. And because I trust the...

With Talitha growing more and more in her understanding of what we say and do, I have been looking for a good children's Story "Bible" read to her.  (I say "Bible" because these books are not literally what we would believe to be the inspired Word of God but rather illustrated books with the main stories of the Bible written for children.)    While I have not come across bad illustrated children's Bibles, there are, admittedly, some that are better than others. Gospel-centric children's Bibles, such as the Jesus Story Book Bible , that strive to focus on the Gospel-themes as portrayed throughout Scripture, are popular these days and are some of the best options out there!  However, I have had a hard time deciding which one I wanted to buy.    And then I read a review for The Beginner's Gospel Story Bible, by Jared Kennedy, published by New Growth Press in 2017. After about 5 minutes of "looking inside it" on Amazon, ...

Smoke billowed above the hill.  It got darker.  And then, as I watched from my kitchen window, some flames flickered over the top of the hill, as if to say "we're headed your way!" Fresh fear struck my heart. Life in the Black Hills has always presented some form of wildfire in the area, but this was the first time since I have been living here that a fire has ever come so close to town that homes were being evacuated. Some of our friends' homes were being evacuated. I texted them to let them know they could crash at our place for the night if they needed to. In the meantime, I started a pile of necessities in case we ourselves also had to evacuate. I nervously packed a couple changes of clothes into a suitcase, loaded essential documents and bedding into the car, and piled some snack food into a basket. And then, with the essentials taken care of, I started scanning the house for extra stuff we could take--items that weren't vita...

 "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."  (Ephesians 5:25-27) Here in Ephesians 5:25-27, Paul paints details into how a husband is to love his wife by giving us the supreme example of Christ's glorious relationship with His Bride.  Paul exhorts husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.  How did He love the Church? Christ loved the Church to the extent that He laid down His life for Her. In my mind's eye, these verses portray a groom waiting at the end of the aisle, anxiously anticipating his bride to appear in the doorway, resplendent in a spotless gown of white . From the context of this passage, we understand that the Groom is Christ.   ...

Christ is risen. He is Risen, indeed.   This deceptively ordinary greeting, most commonly heard on Resurrection Morning as believers greet each other at church, is the decisive hope for our faith. I think we should use this greeting more often, for  “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15) When I think of Scripture's discussion of the resurrection, no other chapter  speaks more clearly about the resurrection than 1 Corinthians 15.    With that said, go read 1 Corinthians 15, and then come back here.   Did you read it?  Ok then, here are a few thoughts:  Had Christ not  risen from the dead, we see here some direct consequences: 1. There would be no resurrecti...

Traditionally, feijoada is Brazilian black bean dish that includes various parts of the cow that we usually don’t eat (such as stomach and other such parts of the intestines) and is considered a delicacy. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever actually had the real feijoada with such ingredients.  Instead, I’ve just had the alternative method of preparing it that has the undesirable ingredients swapped out for linguica (a type of sausage.) In a desperate attempt to figure out something for supper the a couple weeks ago, I decided to concoct a black bean dish to put over rice.  Without meaning to, this dish accidentally ended up being similar to what I remember feijoada to be!  What a nice surprise!  We went from never eating Brazilian food to having these black beans almost every week! This cheater feijoada dish is definitely going on my list of last-minute, fast, super easy, yummy meals to make when Talitha is being n...