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The Restoration Business
Adam Minter is in the junk business. The son of a junkyard owner, he circles the globe researching junk. In his book Junkyard Planet, he chronicles the multibillion-dollar industry of waste recycling. He notes that entrepreneurs around the world devote themselves to locating discarded materials such as copper wire, dirty rags, and plastics and repurposing them to make something new and useful.
After the apostle Paul turned his life over to the Savior, he realized his own achievements and abilities amounted to little more than trash. But Jesus transformed it all into something new and useful. Paul said, “Whatever were gains to…
The surpassing glory of the Holy Spirit
Drop in about anywhere in a reading of the Old Testament, and you find that when God’s people broke the law, the law also broke them. Today on “Discover the Word,” we will dig further into our study in Second Corinthians where the apostle Paul contrasts the glory of the law and the surpassing glory of the Spirit. Join us today on “Discover the Word”!
Being spiritual; not religious
We often hear people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” which is often a reaction against the institutional church. But people in the church sometimes say the same thing. Today on “Discover the Word,” we will discuss the apostle Paul’s depiction of spirituality. Would Paul say he’s “spiritual but not religious?”
How to let God’s love shine
As Christians, I think we’d rather be known for what we’re for, than what we’re against. Today on “Discover the Word,” we’ll talk about how we’re a greater witness to people when we allow the love of God to shine through our transformed hearts than when we try and impose our standards of moral conduct upon them.
Trusting God to finish the work He began
Date: Monday, February 15, 2016 Title: Discovering the Word, part 1 of 5 Text: 2 Corinthians 3 Have you ever wondered how Paul could send a reference letter commending the believers in Corinth when they were such a mess? Today on Discover the Word, we begin this week’s discussion based in Paul’s second letter to the […]
Undigested Knowledge
In his book on language, British diplomat Lancelot Oliphant (1881–1965) observed that many students give correct answers on tests but fail to put those lessons into practice. “Such undigested knowledge is of little use,” declared Oliphant.
Author Barnabas Piper noticed a parallel in his own life: “I thought I was close to God because I knew all the answers,” he said, “but I had fooled myself into thinking that was the same as relationship with Jesus.”
At the temple one day, Jesus encountered people who thought they had all the right answers. They were proudly proclaiming their status as Abraham’s descendants yet…
Training for Life
I recently met a woman who has pushed her body and mind to the limit. She climbed mountains, faced death, and even broke a Guinness world record. Now she’s engaged in a different challenge—that of raising her special-needs child. The courage and faith she employed while ascending the mountains she now pours into motherhood.
In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul speaks of a runner competing in a race. After urging a church enamored with their rights to give consideration to one another (ch. 8), he explains how he sees the challenges of love and self-sacrifice to be like a marathon of…
Ocean-Polished Glass
It starts as broken glass. Ruined. Thrown away. But then something amazing happens. Over time, the useless shards are rolled and tumbled until something beautiful is created. It’s just like how God takes our broken pieces and crafts beauty.
Desiring Growth
The axolotl (pronounced ACK suh LAH tuhl) is a biological enigma. Instead of maturing into adult form, this endangered Mexican salamander retains tadpole-like characteristics throughout its life. Writers and philosophers have used the axolotl as a symbol of someone who fears growth.
In Hebrews 5 we learn about Christians who were avoiding healthy growth, remaining content with spiritual “milk” intended for new believers. Perhaps because of fear of persecution, they weren’t growing in the kind of faithfulness to Christ that would enable them to be strong enough to suffer with Him for the sake of others (vv. 7-10). Instead they were…
Glass Beach
Early 20th-century residents of Fort Bragg, California, disposed of their trash by throwing it over a cliff and onto a nearby beach. Cans, bottles, tableware, and household garbage accumulated in huge, disgusting piles. Even when residents stopped depositing trash on the beach, it remained an embarrassment—a dump seemingly beyond reclamation.
Over the years, however, wave action broke up the glass and pottery and washed the rubbish out to sea. The pounding surf rolled and tumbled the glass fragments in the sand on the ocean floor, frosting and smoothing the surface and creating gemlike “sea glass,” which it then deposited back onto…
Pruning the vine
Today on “Discover the Word,” special guest Margaret Feinberg helps center our discussion on what Jesus actually meant when He talked about “pruning the vine.” Instead of whacking the vines with a machete, the vinedresser trims the vine gently, branch by branch. We continue our fascinating conversations about the agrarian images used in the Bible as Margaret tells us about time she spent with a vintner learning about “the fruit of the vine.”
Repair or Replace?
It was time to fix the trim on the windows of our house. So I scraped, sanded, and applied wood filler to get the aging trim ready for paint. After all of my efforts—including a coat of primer and some too-expensive paint—the trim looks, well, pretty good. But it doesn’t look new. The only way to make the trim look new would be to replace the old wood.
It’s okay to have weather-damaged window trim that looks “pretty good” to our eye. But when it comes to our sin-damaged hearts, it’s not enough to try to fix things up. From God’s…
An Inside View
Retired physicist Arie van’t Riet creates works of art in an unusual way. He arranges plants and deceased animals in various compositions and then x-rays them. He scans the developed x-rays into a computer and then adds color to certain parts of his pictures. His artwork reveals the inner complexity of flowers, fish, birds, reptiles, and monkeys.
An inside view of something is often more fascinating and more significant than an exterior view. At first glance, Samuel thought Eliab looked like he could be Israel’s next king (1 Sam. 16:6). But God warned Samuel not to look at Eliab’s physical traits.…
Why I’m Getting Baptized 30 Years On
I’ve finally made up my mind to attend a baptism class; no one coerced me into doing it. A series of events over the past five years, and especially in recent months, have assured me of my faith and now, 30 years on, I’m ready to publicly declare it.
