Love comes first; keeping God’s word flows out of that love. Loving God and loving others—those closest to us as well as strangers—is the first measure of faith. With this love...

Paul has a vision of the man of Macedonia, and he immediately follows that vision. He never finds the man who came to him in a dream. Instead, he finds a...

Paul and Timothy are eager to spread the gospel but have been struggling with their next move. The Holy Spirit has forbidden them to go to Asia. The Spirit of Jesus...

Psalm 67 is clearly intended for use in worship. The psalm follows the contours of our prayer and our encounter with God in worship. We move from saying what we hope...

God continues to surprise us. In this story Peter faces several surprises. One comes in the acceptance of unacceptable people in the “in” group. A Jewish sect that is in the...

Jesus uses the word glorified (or some form) five times and the word love four times in these five short verses. Jesus also says farewell, explains who he is in terms...

Jesus calls his disciples to love one another as he has loved them. Sounds easy, right? But knowing that the disciples did not always get along and that Judas’s walking out...

We have a saying in Mexico that states, “Oh, Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” This is not a blessing. Sharing a three-thousand-mile-long border has...

When our youngest son was about six or seven years old, my husband and I were commenting on the dire situation of the world. Our son piped up to say, “Well,...

This story must be important because it repeats what the previous chapter has already told us. Namely, that Peter has had three consecutive visions about food. We know that Peter seems...