Good Words for Today

“When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away" (1 Peter 5:4). Do you feel like no one notices what you are doing? Keep going, keep believing, keep serving, keep giving. The Chief Shepherd has his eyes on you.

It is said that the early Christians, facing persecution and death, engraved on their tombs the Greek symbols Alpha and Omega. Jesus is the beginning and the end of all things. He is all we need in this life. He is all we need at the moment of death. He is all we need now and forever!

We think we are going from the land of the living to the land of the dying, But if you know Jesus, you are going from the land of the dying to the land of the living.

Your first five minutes in heaven will more than make up for a lifetime of suffering on earth.

Coming to Christ is not like slapping a coat of paint on a shack. Coming to Christ is like those renovation shows on TV where they take an old, ramshackle house with sagging porch, broken windows, vermin-infested walls, leaky roof, cracked foundation, and they strip it down and then rebuild it totally so that it becomes a thing of beauty. Coming to Christ means submitting to his “extreme makeover” of your life. That frightens some people so much that they never come at all. But if you are willing for the Master Carpenter to take over your life, when he is finished, you will be masterpiece of grace for all the world to see.

Plan for today: Forgive quickly. Encourage freely. Pray fervently.

God often sends difficult people to us who have the peculiar gift of bringing out the worst in us. God uses them to reveal our hidden weakness so that we cry out to the Lord for deliverance. This is part of God's "painful mercy" to his children.

Truth is not determined by majority vote.

Lord, I thank you in advance for unexpected interruptions. Deliver me from a grouchy spirit, I pray. Amen. 

No one is a failure who does God's will.

Conviction of sin is dangerous if it does not lead you to repentance. Better never to hear the gospel than to hear it and do nothing about it.

The B-I-B-L-E Yes, that's the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God, The B-I-B-L-E.

The world says, “Seeing is believing.” But God says, “Believing is seeing.” We will see God’s hand once we believe it is truly there.

Whatever it takes to get us on our knees is good for our spiritual growth.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that we don’t have to be perfect to come to you. If we had to be perfect, who among us would qualify? They called you the Friend of Sinners. Thank God it is true. You are the friend and we are the sinners.  Thank you for taking us in. Amen. 

God keeps time in his own way. He does not confine himself to our puny understanding of what he intends to do.

Heavenly Father, grant that we might be great risk-takers for the kingdom of God.  Shake us loose from the security of staying in the boat. Help us to walk on the waters of faith because we believe that Jesus will hold us up.  Amen. 

Repentance is a work of God in the human heart. That means we can't force others to repent. If you come a day too soon, the prodigal will think, “With one more day, I would have figured out a way to solve my own problems.” As long as the scheming and lying and deceiving continues, the best thing we can do is to pray for God’s Spirit to bring them to their senses and then to wait patiently until that day comes.

Give me, O Lord, a large supply of Your grace so that I may submit to You in every trial and trust You even when walking in the darkness. Amen.

Whatever is in the heart must eventually come out. Remember Lot's wife. She didn't get in trouble until she started to look back.

Great is our fickleness . . . Great is Thy faithfulness.

A thought to remember when hard times hit: As bad as things are, if it weren’t for God, things would be much worse.