“The year that King Uzziah died,” things looked bleak from Isaiah’s point of view. Uzziah had died alienated from God. And just a few years before, in 745 B.C., the ruthless imperialist Tiglath-Pileser III had taken the throne of Assyria and begun a campaign of terror and conquest. Israel was in his path. The king was dead and the kingdom of Israel looked like it would be swept away.
Nothing is more important than a solid understanding of what happened on the cross.
“What is Advent? It’s the season when we look back to Christ’s first coming, as a baby born in Bethlehem, and look forward to his second coming when he will return to renew and redeem every part of fallen creation. The Advent season gives us a time to reflect upon the promises of God and to anticipate the fulfillment of those promises in Christ. Advent season is a time for remembering and rejoicing! This year, Advent season is from December 1 – 24, and we’d like to send you an email each day of the season with an Advent devotional from Gospel in Life.
I will never forget my birthday, May 8, 2001. Nor will I forget my husband, Daniel’s birthday, May 9, 2001. I have often joked that my husband gives me money on my birthday and I return it on his birthday. But this birthday was to change the trajectory of our lives.
My run-ins with the police continued, and one night I found myself handcuffed after assaulting a rival gang member with a baseball bat. Sitting in the back of the police car, I realized I was about to enter the criminal justice system, and I prayed and promised God that if He rescued me from that situation, I would change my ways. The officers ended up letting me go home free that night. God had answered my prayer, but I did not keep my vow.
One day my brother and I got into a bad fist fight, which resulted in me getting sent to Florida to live with my mom. My brother had found my mom! Apparently she was doing better. I lived with her for a few weeks, but it was obvious that my mother was still using drugs. My uncle lived one city over and came to our apartment. He told me, “Angel, either you come live with me or you stay here and your life spirals down the hole it’s been going down until you end up like your mom.”
If I felt like I was a sinner, it’s because I was a sinner. If it felt like all the things I was resting my hope in for my own righteousness were disintegrating under my feet, it’s because by His grace, they were disintegrating. “He inflicts wounds that heal,” I remember Tim Keller saying, and God was most definitely breaking my dependence on my own self-righteousness, so He could demonstrate His own righteousness as the justification for my life and salvation.
We invite you to sign up to receive our daily devotionals during the season of Lent—February 14 – March 28. Each day there is scripture and a meditation to help you reflect on the hope and glory provided through Christ’s death and resurrection.
It all started as a way to support my then girlfriend, now wife. In the same way I’d talk through her work struggles to support her career, or reluctantly shop with her and provide my valuable fashion advice, I agreed to go to church to support her desire to reignite her faith. I wasn’t a believer, but she grew up a Christian. After a hiatus from church in college, she wanted to return, so we began spending our Sunday mornings at a church in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco..
I reached a point where I did not know how to live as a Christian anymore. I became suicidal, thinking my only two options for my future were death or to come out as a lesbian atheist. The former option was birthed out of a summation of the church’s language around this conversation. Sinners were welcome, certainly, but only the heterosexual kind. I did not know how to become more Christian in order to be heterosexual. So, to appease the church crowd, I thought the Christ-following answer was to kill the gay out of me.
Suddenly, I felt him grip my arm and yank me off the path, crying out, “Attention: serpent!” Look out, a snake! As he pulled me back, he lunged himself forward, and in one swift stomp, Sidiki crushed the snake’s head under his heel. Snakes in this region are deadly poisonous, and the nearest hospital was many miles away. So, on my first night in his village, Sidiki saved me from certain death.
How do we move from becoming anxious about what we see and read to being able to have peace as we build a habit of turning to God with prayers and petitions based on what is going on? And how do we keep from letting our minds go down an endless spiral of negative information and instead choose to dwell on restorative things?
I have to see that I have a need for forgiveness because I am a sinner. Now, that’s sort of negative. That’s humility. That helps toward forgiving other people when you realize “I’m a sinner too”. But that’s the bad news. The good news is the cost of forgiveness. What God went through, what Jesus went through in order to get you that forgiveness and to forgive you freely. And that fills you with grateful joy, and there’s a need for both the humility and the joy.
How do we move from becoming anxious about what we see and read to being able to have peace as we build a habit of turning to God with prayers and petitions based on what is going on? And how do we keep from letting our minds go down an endless spiral of negative information and instead choose to dwell on restorative things?
Christians in every society must use their wisdom in how to apply the Bible carefully, allowing others to come to different conclusions and use different approaches—all of which are based on biblical inspiration, but none of which comes with absolute biblical warrant. How freeing is it for the church that we can agree on the moral imperatives, but have a healthy (and even heated!) debate over the application of those morals in culture?
An autoimmune disease that had been lying dormant surfaced early this year with life-changing force. Overnight my world completely shifted.
Even though I turned her down, she befriended me, and over the next few months, she and her friends became my friends. I was attracted to the way they loved one another and me, and was often amazed by their generosity and care. I eventually accepted one of their many invitations to come to church because I grew to trust them and love their community. About a year later, in large part thanks to their persistence, I became a follower of Jesus.
An autoimmune disease that had been lying dormant surfaced early this year with life-changing force. Overnight my world completely shifted.
As I rode the subway home, I was lost in thought. I recalled the moment on 9/11 when Brian and I had said goodbye to each other at the fort, when I realized that my relationship with God was practically nonexistent. But here I was, going to the church for help, and those ladies had cared. As I pieced everything together, something shifted inside of me. I felt hope.
I realized I had made an idol out of being a pastor and when it was taken from me, I reacted like a small child with his toy taken away. I began to converse with God daily and digest his Word again daily and pray and sing and fast. And the prison I had willingly put myself in slowly melted away.
This Month's Featured Book
In The Prodigal God, Tim Keller examines the way Jesus presents the parable to speak both to those who run from God and to those who try to earn his love by being good. It reveals the heart of the gospel—a message of hope for both the rebellious younger brother and the judgmental older brother, and an invitation for all to experience God’s grace.
