Wisdom 4 The Dimensions of Wisdom

 Do you know you’re IPFL?

 If Jesus is the summary picture of wisdom in the flesh, it is with a purpose. That purpose is to allow us to see Heaven and the world as He sees them and live accordingly. He gives us the Spirit of wisdom, the Holy Spirit, to widen our…

Wisdom 3 It’s All in the Breathing

 I’m not sure if everyone gets the difference between what the world calls wisdom and the wisdom of God. There are 417 uses of the word wisdom in Scripture and amazingly they all find their resolution in one name, Jesus. What wisdom looks like is wrapped up in Him. That’s the difference between the world’s wisdom and God’s. One is a human intellectual concept subject to shifting…

Wisdom

 In early 1900’s Norway, the goal for a woman was to marry well and raise children. To accomplish this goal my mother was sent to what was called a ‘finishing school.’ The idea was to take young girls like her and teach them to be refined wives and mothers, to ‘finish them’ with that goal in mind. It was to teach growing young ladies the ‘ins and outs’ of what that culture…

Are We Spiritually Sighted?

 The ability to see is one of the great gifts we have. Physical sight gives us a visual perspective that we could not have in any other way. But there is another kind of vision, spiritual vision, the kind of vision that sees in the invisible dimension. Jesus teaches using parables, “This…

Juxtaposition, a Spiritual Odyssey

 Juxtaposition. An interesting word. It’s putting contrasts side by side. The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is Saturday. They lie in juxtaposition to one another. They’re never the same. They are always different but tied together at the same time. Actually, every day in the world is an in-between day, a day juxtaposed to the known…

The Seven Words of the Cross #7

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Lk.23:46).”

 Here is where context pictures the final blow. There are seven particulars:

 1.It was now about the sixth hour (apprx.3p.m.).…

The Seven Words of the Cross #6

 “It is finished (John 19:30).”

 If you want to understand understand these last words, you have to look at them in the context of Jesus’ mission as He saw it. "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work (John 4:34)."…

The Seven Words of the Cross #5

 Jn.19:28 " I thirst."

 Two simple words, yet they are spoken in a spiritual context. That is what all Jesus’ words from the Cross convey and that's what makes the details significant. So, what was going on here? When the…

The Seven Words of the Cross #4

 “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt.27:46, Mk.15:34)

 If ever there was a moment of complete lostness, isolation and the aloneness into which we are born, it was this moment of Jesus’ cry to His Father. If anything, it may be for each human being, the most important of the seven words He utters in the midst of His suffering…

The Seven Words of the Cross #3 

Jn.19:26-27 “Dear woman, here is your son” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

 There is a lot of speculation about these words. Was Jesus elevating Mary to a position of worship or was He simply turning her care over to John? The in-between assumptions vary. In the Greek text here and in Chapter 2 at the wedding feast, He addressed…

The Seven Words of the Cross #2

 “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise (Lk.23:43).”

 The word Jesus uses here for the phrase, “I tell you the truth” is one simple word, amen. It is the Hebrew word written in Greek which is pronounced the same as the word we use to conclude a prayer as if to say, ‘I agree.’ But used here by Jesus it has a…

The Seven Words from the Cross, #1

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34).”

 First, Jesus says, forgive them. Who is ‘them’? The leaders who conspired, the people in the crowd that shouted for His crucifixion, the disciples, the large group of people who did not want to get involved, those who couldn’t have…

Jumping to Conclusions

 I was about to write an article about jumping to conclusions when I saw a letter to the editor in a local paper entitled “Millennials should be heard, not judged.” Instead of continuing, it struck me that that title was, in itself, a conclusion, a false conclusion, that there are such things as millennials. The writer was right in his ongoing statement…

Tribulation; You’re In It.

 “If only I hadn’t put my hand on the hot pot handle, ouch, it really does smart.” I think we’ve all done that at one time or another. How about these: “I don’t understand why that happened, I didn’t plan for it to happen. I was playing ball and whatever spurred me to jump in that direction, I don’t know, but my ankle snapped, and this is why the cast.”…

The Holy Spirit

 There are basic premises we work on when we are disciples of Jesus:

 “God is spirit…(Jn.4:24).” What does that say about us? We are images of God (Gen.1:26). We have a mind, a heart and a spirit. Therefore:

 First, we know that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience, Jesus being the definitive expression.

 Second, 100% of everything we do is based on what we can’t see. “So, we fix…

The Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6)

When Jesus spoke these words describing Himself, it was these three words that put us in an entirely different dimension, a spiritual dimension. Those three words have a deep and penetrating significance. They describe the personal and relational structure of all existence, namely the Lord God. He is a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We’ll get into…

It’s All About the Crumbs

 Every so often we run into a passage that seems to be contrary to the Jesus we have been taught is the presence of God’s love. Just such a passage is Mark 7:24-30, the request by a Gentile woman to deliver her daughter from a demon. The way Jesus responds to her request seems harsh at first glance. But therein lies the teaching. Our immediate reaction, that first glance, may not be an…

Who Rules Our Every-Next-Moment?

 How we think about Scripture depends on how we think into it. Let me say that again in another way. What occupies our thinking just before we pick up the Bible? What is our mindset as we open its pages? What is our thinking condition at the moment, our concentration at the moment, the influences of our emotional, physical and spiritual issues…

The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast

 “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that birds of the air come and perch in its branches (13:31-32).”…

The Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl

 These two parables appear to be similar in idea but are told separately for a purpose. First of all, these parables are about spirituality, relationship and God’s heart, all of which are ‘hidden’ from our eyes. They’re invisible. Secondly, they depend on revelation from outside of us, an awakening that causes an insight. It is our aloneness that calls for a…