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What Faith Does to Your Dreams

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“Glory be to God, Who by His mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of — infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes.” (Ephesians 3:20 TLB) Faith turns God-given dreams into reality. Nothing happens until somebody starts dreaming! The Bible is full of people who had God-given dreams. Abraham dreamed of being the father of a great nation. Moses dreamed of setting God’s people free. Joseph dreamed of saving a nation and his own family. Throughout Scripture, there are all kinds of people who were inspiring dreamers, like Daniel and Paul and David. Ephesians 3:20 says,  “Glory be to God, Who by His mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of — infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes”  (TLB). Now, if there were ever a “blank check” verse in the Bible, that’s it. God is able to do far more than we would dare to
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Your Faith Can Move Mountains

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Faith opens the door to miracles. If you study the Bible and history, you find that every time God moves on Earth and does a miracle, it’s because somebody believed. Jesus said in Mark 11:22-24, “Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith” (CEV). Faith can move mountains! God has set up the universe in a hierarchy of laws, and the law of faith is actually a higher law than the laws of nature. That’s where miracles come in. Because when faith is used, the law of faith goes into practice, and the law of faith can actually do more than the laws of physics. Does God still perform miracles today? Of course He does. Every time you stretch your faith, God does miracles — every single time. My question for you is this: What’s the mountain in your life that needs to be moved? What’s the thing you’ve already decided will neve
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How Can You Know God Loves You?

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“The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all His creation.”  (Psalm 145:9 NLT, second edition) One of my pet peeves is water-saving shower heads. I can’t stand them! It’s just a tiny stream coming down. It’s not a shower; it’s a dribble! I’m a pretty big guy, and it takes me a long time to get wet with one little dribble. Don’t call it a shower unless it’s a shower! That’s why I think it’s so important what the Bible tells us about God’s love. The Bible says,  “The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all His creation”  (Psalm 145:9 NLT, second edition). God’s love for you is no dribble. The Bible says God showers His love on us. He isn’t stingy like water-saving showe heads are with water. Psalm 42:8 says, “Each day the Lord pours His unfailing love upon me.” When I use salad dressing, I’m not one of these people who dips the fork in the salad dressing for a little bit of taste. I pour it on! In fact, sometimes it looks like I want mor
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God’s Plan for Your Pain

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“If you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God Who created you, for He will never fail you.”  (1 Peter 4:19 NLT, second edition) Remember what photography was like before everything went digital? When you took a picture, the first thing you’d get was a negative. Then you had to develop the negative into a positive by going into a darkroom and shining a light through it onto photographic paper. This turned the negative into a positive full-color photograph. That’s what God wants to do with the injustices in our lives. We all have them. People have mistreated us. They’ve passed over us. They’ve taken advantage of us. God wants to take all the negatives, shine the light of Jesus through them, and turn them into positives — a full-color picture of the life we were made to live. The Bible says,  “If you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who cre
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Unfairness Shows Us We Need Jesus

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“God is letting the world go on its sinful way so that He can test mankind, and so that men themselves will see that they are no better than beasts.”   (Ecclesiastes 3:18 TLB) You’ll hear it from many different quarters these days: People are basically good and unselfish. It’s their environments that turn people’s hearts toward evil. Unfortunately, that theory just doesn’t square with what we see in human nature. If you’ve ever been around small children, you get this. They’re born with a selfish nature. Phrases like, “Feed me! Care for me! I’m the center of attention” are the rule rather than the exception. Human injustice throughout the world and in our own communities also shatters any misconception we have that we humans are all basically good. Left to our own devices, we oppress other people, hoard our food, and generally think about ourselves much more than anyone else. It’s as if God looks at the humanity He created and says, “OK, you think you’re basically good. You
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God Says Respond to Unfairness with Love

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Unfairness is part of the human condition. You can’t live on this earth for long without feeling like someone has treated you unfairly. Maybe it’s a parent who put you through a miserable childhood. Maybe it’s an employer who treats you differently than your co-workers. Maybe you feel like you were treated unfairly by the legal process. You can choose to respond to the people who hurt you by hurting them. That’s the easiest choice to make, no doubt about it. But God gives us another option in His Word: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44 NIV). When people hurt you, they expect you to retaliate. They expect you to seek revenge. But God wants you to do the exact opposite. He wants you to respond in love. Respond to mistreatment with love, and you keep the other person from controlling you. Booker T. Washington once said, “I will never allow another
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A Fresh Start After Sexual Sin

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“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”   (1 John 1:9 NIV) God’s standards never change. Premarital sex is unacceptable. It always has been. It always will be. Living together without getting married is unacceptable to God. It always has been. It always will be. Adultery, being unfaithful in your marriage, is unacceptable to God. It always has been. It always will be. Pornography is unacceptable to God. It always has been. It always will be. But if you’ve been guilty of one of those sins, that’s not the end of your story. God gives you a chance to come clean and start over. How do you do that? 1) Repent.  Repent means “to change your mind.” You say, “You were right, God. I was wrong. What I did was sin.” You don’t rationalize your sin or excuse it. The most important part is, you do this now. If you’re currently in the middle of an affair, end it today. 2) Receive forgiveness.  God is waiti
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