The Plumbline

Thomas Jefferson lived by one principle: "Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching." While it isn't a direct quote from the Bible, the principle sure is! All the world watches to see how the children of God will respond in times of need, crisis, and even peaceful repose. Why? They want to know if you will handle life differently because Jesus dwells within you. Intelligent people are always ready to learn. Their ears are open for knowledge. (Proverbs 18:15) Robert Half reminds us, "When one teaches, two learn." For me to teach anything, share any of the truths God has revealed to me, I have to learn them first. Do I learn them all fully before I share them? No, but when truth becomes alive to me, you bet I am going to share it! Be ready to learn, no matter the day or the hour. This is how I operate - when God speaks, I want to be ready to listen. How about you? Do some of God's teachings come at a time when I am busy with other stuff? Y

Mark Twain said that the human race had one really 'effective' weapon - laughter. I think our most effective weapon is not really laughter as much as it is the Word of God. Laughter might give us a momentary release - the Word of God and what it can accomplish within us is lasting and sure. Have you ever been reading through scripture only to find something within the passage 'calls out' some behavior you have been struggling with, or reveals some answer to a worry you have been mulling over? The purpose of the Word of God is to teach us - to make us wise. We are able to discern direction once hidden from us because of the work of the Spirit of God within us and the revelation of the Word of God to us. If we want more than an 'immediate release', we need to take in what can give us a permanent and secure hope. If you rebuke a mocker, you will only get a smart retort; yes, he will snarl at you. So don’t bother with him; he will only hate you for trying to help h

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.  (Roy H. Williams) Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,  your slate’s wiped clean.  Count yourself lucky— God holds nothing against you  and you’re holding nothing back from him.  When I kept it all inside,  my bones turned to powder,  my words became daylong groans.  The pressure never let up;  all the juices of my life dried up.  Then I let it all out;  I said, “I’ll come clean about my failures to God.”  Suddenly the pressure was gone— my guilt dissolved,  my sin disappeared. (Psalm 32:1-5) I don't want anyone to feel they are alone in their mistakes - heaven knows I have made more than my fair share and I am not finished living yet! We are supposed to learn from those mistakes, though. How many times have you and I made the same mistake on more than one occasion? The likelihood i

"Don’t suppose for a moment, though, that God’s Word has malfunctioned in some way or other." (Romans9:6) Most of the time we are the ones who "malfunction" - not God, not his Word, not his promises, not his commands. When something is "functioning" as it was designed to function, it follows a particular order - all the pieces fit together as they should, producing the intended outcome. Truthfully, only God can do this 100% of the time! Try as we might, we are going to "malfunction" on occasion. Trusting in our ability is always going to leave us with "less than" whatever it is we could attain, obtain, or maintain with God doing the work! How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because inste

I am God, the one and only. I don’t just talk to myself or mumble under my breath . I never told Jacob, ‘Seek me in emptiness, in dark nothingness.’ I am God. I work out in the open, saying what’s right, setting things right. So gather around, come on in, all you refugees and castoffs. They don’t seem to know much, do they—those who carry around their no-god blocks of wood, praying for help to a dead stick? So tell me what you think. Look at the evidence. Put your heads together. Make your case. Who told you, and a long time ago, what’s going on here? Who made sense of things for you? Wasn’t I the one? God? It had to be me. I’m the only God there is—the only God who does things right and knows how to help. So turn to me and be helped—saved!—everyone, whoever and wherever you are . (Isaiah 45:18-22) In these words, God opens dialogue with his people - God, Creator of the heavens—he is, we need to remember, first and foremost God. Maker of earth—he put it on its foundations, built it f

You don't just have a story - you're a story in the making, and you never know what the next chapter's going to be. That's what makes it exciting. (Dan Millman) If every chapter of our lives was opened with the words, "My purpose in writing this chapter in your lives is...", we'd feel a whole lot better about what is going on at the moment! The truth is, we don't know the end from the beginning, so we enter each new chapter of our lives with just a little bit of fear, a tiny bit of doubt, and maybe even an overwhelming amount of both! When we commit our hearts to Christ, believing that Jesus is God's Son, our "end result" will be eternal life in Christ Jesus. This very fact leads us to a place of "boldness" in approaching God with whatever our heart is burdened with - the ability to face the 'next chapter' with a boldness we don't possess on our own. My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in Go