How can you be born spiritually and begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? It is easy to stumble over the simplicity of what God offers us through His Son. You are born again or saved when you believe Jesus. He said that you have access to the peace of God through Him. The starting …
Continue reading “34106 Transformation through Spiritual Birth”
Many Christians would name Galatians 5:22-23—the passage about the “fruit of the Spirit”—as among their favorite verses in the Bible. But are you aware that Galatians 5 refers not to one kind of fruit but to two? The Spirit produces love, joy, peace, and all the rest, surely enough, but before that our old nature …
Anger receives a great deal of attention in mental health clinics and counseling centers all over the country. So do guilt feelings. A mother feels guilty because she screams at her children. A young man feels guilty because he no longer adheres to the behavioral standards by which he was reared. Another youth has been …
To get out of the gloomy pit of despair, bitterness, hostility, jealousy, and the accompanying aches, pains, and misery, you must take personal responsibility for your own character, no matter what someone else does–or did. If a person is miserable, it is his or her choice. Our woe is not the result of our background, …
There is a relationship that exists between the mental/emotional state of a person and the workings of his body. For a better understanding of how this relationship functions, we must turn to the physician. O. Spurgeon English, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Temple University School of Medicine, speaks from long study …
Are you angry or frustrated because of other people’s behavior, trying to act the way you think a “Christian” should act, hiding your true feelings, agonizing on the inside? Maybe you’re spending hours talking your problem out with a professional or a trusted friend. They listen, and you feel better because you have talked things …
Does your serenity, peace of mind, and joy depend upon a choice another person makes? Think of your favorite person. They have good points and faults. You don’t have problems with their strengths, but when they won’t do something that’s important to you, you have a choice to make. One of your options is to …
Are you troubled by things you’ve done, by what you’ve said to people, or by what people have said to you? Are your words typically supportive, or do you find yourself often critical, caustic or hostile? Colossians 3:17 says “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus, …
What is your reaction when a friend confides, “I’m going to be very frank. There’s something about you that I wish were not true”? If he has a compliment, you are only too glad to have him say it; you don’t even draw him apart from the crowd to hear it. But how hard it …
Continue reading “34122 Facing Your Shortcomings and Failures”
How would you describe the way you talk? Are your words positive, constructive, comforting, supportive, and uplifting? Or are the words that come out of your mouth most often cutting, negative, and hurtful? According to Proverbs 15:4 (KJV), “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness there in is a breech in the …