Reading: Matthew 19:1-6 “… At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’” (v.4). Some years ago, my work had been in the context of facilitating projects that addressed poverty in developing countries. Part of it was operating the concept of WID—women in development, and when it was no longer politically correct, GAD—gender and…
Christian living / Forgiveness / Healing / Love / Matthew / New Testament / Repentance
Reading: Matthew 18:21-35 “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart” (vv. 34-35). In a previous post I have touched briefly on love…
Reading: Matthew 18:21-35 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants” (v.23). “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow-servant just as…
Christian living / Faith / Healing / Matthew / New Testament / Prayer
Reading: Matthew 18:18-20 “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them”—this is a passage that I always quote, but always forgetting the two verses before it! That together, if we agree about anything to ask the Father—He will do it for us; and together, as a church, we…
Reading: Matthew 18:15-17 I used to think that the moral guidance provided by the Word of God was only at the conceptual level—i.e., love one another, forgive, do not hate. It was difficult for me to grasp because actions such as loving and forgiving were for me ‘emotions’, not ‘actions’; and as mere emotions, loving…
“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the…
Reading: Matthew 18:10-11 “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” I used to think of “guardian angels” as a myth—because I never heard them taught in Sunday School and in…
Reading: Matthew 18:8-9 In my previous post I have laid out my first argument on why I believe hell is real—I did not mean to be preachy (apologies, I thought I sounded a bit one!), but rather making stable the ground I am standing on—and if this also helps your faith to be less shaky,…
Reading: Matthew 18:8-9 “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching…
Reading: Matthew 18:1-8 “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the…
Reading: Matthew 18:1-4 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 18:3-4 To enter the kingdom of heaven, we need to become…
Reading: Matthew 17:24-27 I had to do a bit of searching about the temple tax, as I do not recall reading about it in the OT. But apparently, it was the atonement money referred to in Exodus 30, paid every time there was a census, and eventually as an annual tax. Now, if it was…
