Do you know that feeling? The one where if it isn’t one thing, it’s the next? Before you’ve even had time to process one battle, another one is already waiting for you. There have been times, especially this year—a year that has stretched me in more heart-wrenching ways than I thought possible—when I’ve wanted to tap God on the shoulder and say, “God, I know You’re the Creator of time … but some of us need a moment to catch our breath.”
It was a couple of years ago, and I’d been seeing ads for this new “Imagine Me” feature. For the simple price of giving a major corporation images of your face, this AI tool could “imagine” you as … well, just about anything. On this particular afternoon, I was just bored enough—and perhaps just dissatisfied enough—to give it a try.
As a child in church, I spent much of my early life hearing, reading, and singing about God’s love for me. But as I look back on my walk with the Lord thus far, there is one question that I seem to have never stopped asking: “Does God really love me?”
Michael Horton exhorts Christians to not confuse discipleship with the gospel. A disciple was someone who followed a rabbi around not only to learn doctrine but also to see its application in life. Jesus was one such rabbi, as we see in the familiar story reported in Luke 10:38–42.
George Packer wrote an article in The Atlantic (“How America Fractured into Four Parts,” July/August 2021) which outlines four recent U.S. political movements that employ moral visions of a good society. He concludes that they are all inadequate and that he does not want to live in any of the four “Americas” that the political movements are seeking to establish.
In the wilderness God provided for the material needs of the children of Israel with manna. Every morning the manna appeared on the ground and the Israelites went out to get it with the following instruction: “Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent. The Israelites did as they were told: some gathered much, some little.”
Since the beginning of humanity in the Garden of Eden, there has been one unchanged aspect of the human heart—deep down in our soul we all desire to be the king of our lives. We are unwavering in our determination to unseat the rightful and only true king, Jesus Christ.
“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.
This Month's Featured Book
The meaning of Christmas can often be hidden, covered by the decorations, gift exchanges and seasonal parties that happen at this time every year. In this book, Tim Keller examines the hard edges of the biblical story of Christ’s birth and what it means for us today.
