The Plumbline

People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves. Everyone who is ruled by the Holy Spirit thinks about spiritual things. If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace. Our desires fight against God, because they do not and cannot obey God’s laws. If we follow our desires, we cannot please God. You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God’s Spirit, who lives in you. People who don’t have the Spirit of Christ in them don’t belong to him. But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. Yet God raised Jesus to life! God’s Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit. (Romans 8:5-11) Some desires are easily fulfilled, while others are the things we chase after repeatedly and find no satisfaction in ever obtaining. Never forget the "hold" desires place on us as we pursue whatever it i...

A promise - do we really understand the meaning of that word anymore today? It seems like words are spoken these days, with no real intention of keeping those "promises". Sometimes it is because they were made in the spur of the moment. At other times, it is because they were made at a moment when we were emotional vulnerable. In fact, many people who raise money for various projects count on us being too busy to really explore what we are giving the money toward, or that their marketing tactics will tug at our heart-strings enough to get us to give. A promise is an expression of assurance that we base our expectation on - not a stipulation, or an undertaking that might or might not work out. When God made a promise to his children, he made it with a commitment to fulfill every aspect of that promise, regardless of the cost. He didn't make those promises us to either at the spur of the moment, or because his emotional strings were pulled. They were made out of intense lov...