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Showing posts from September, 2024

Be Humble, not Proud

  Tips on understanding God's Word: Just reading the Bible or picking verses here and there like from a dictionary of quotations doesn't make much difference in our lives. What we need to do is think deeply about God's Word and how we can form a deeper relationship with Him (Josh 1:8). For instance, I pondered on this at the weekend. 1 Pet 5:5 “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” This is repeated in James 4:6 and both are taken from Prov 3:34. If we take this with the verses that follow (1 Pet 5:6-11), we can see that God only listens to those that humble themselves. If we worry about our problems or blame others for our circumstances, as Adam and Eve did (Gen 3:12,13), we are exhibiting pride. How is this pride? Because we believe our complaints and worrying solve our problems and not God. Humility is about admitting that doing things our way and promoting self-importance, doesn't work. When we only think about ourselves first, we are unable to think

Choosing Life

Choosing life is not a band slogan, it is a matter of life and death. I was reading Deuteronomy this morning (the best way to start every day - with God) and came to 30:19 "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live". God gave man a choice at the beginning: Listen to me and live, make your own choices and die. We know what happened with Adam and Eve and it is the same as we all do each day. If we choose to live our lives the way we think is best and "do our own thing", it leads to death (Prov 14:12). You only have to look at the world around us to see what problems selfishness brings. I cross-referenced this and it is the same everywhere in the Bible. Rom 8:6 tells us basically that "human nature" leads us to death and being led by the Holy Spirit (in us from repentance and found in the written Word), leads to lif