Paul left a wide path of destruction as he went city to city persecuting God’s people, and yet in 1 Timothy 1:15, even as he names himself the foremost of sinners Jesus came to save, he can say that last part: Jesus came to save him. And He came to save us, too.
As Jesus ascended into Heaven, the disciples needed to be challenged on what they were going to do next.
We keep wanting knowledge and power to get to what we think will make ourselves secure. God calls us instead to see how He makes us secure.
You think the picnic went great until you start to itch and realize you brought ticks home with you. What tick bites—those sneaky sins whose venom is already inside before you notice—do you have? Those are the ones Jesus came to rescue us from.
We all want to avoid destruction and tragedy. And given our own inclinations, we all move away from the very source of escape from those things.
As we wrap up our exploration of Psalm 9, we’re confronted with a question: are we living in the path of the sin storm or turning the shelter of God?
After Jericho’s walls fall without a fight, Israel feels certain the next battle will be routine—so certain they never bother to ask God first. Joshua 7 exposes a harder truth: what happens when success convinces us we’ve earned God’s blessing. One man’s hidden sin and a leader’s unexamined confidence unravel an entire people, revealing the dangerous gap between assumed standing and actual standing before God.
As the Israelites finds themselves out in the wilderness for years, Numbers 20 shows a people in a fog of discouragement — even Moses himself loses sight of what God is doing. But even when the discouragement feels overwhelming, we don’t have to let it get the final word.
Little sins that seem almost harmless still multiply until they leave us too blind even for grace. In Genesis 4, Cain’s story is one of just such little sins and it serves as a caution as we tend our own “harmless sins.”
We think we have everything under control and know how to anticipate our weaknesses, yet sin still sneaks up looking attractive and attacks when least expected. In Genesis 3 a crafty serpent made the forbidden tree seem good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for wisdom.