The Plumbline

The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts . Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) All of scripture is filled with principles meant as "safety guides" for our lives as much as they are meant to point us toward the heart and mind of God. The Ten Commandments - the basis for evaluating if we are "keeping" God's intention for our lives in an honorable manner. There are times when we are unaware of the dangers which lie right in our path - but if we will remain consistently faithful to the truths (principles) we are given, we should know safety as we travel these path...

Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? (Mark 8:36) Let him lead - how do we actually do that? Most of us actually believe we want him to lead, but we have absolutely no clue how on earth we accomplish this in our lives. We 'intend' to let him lead and then all of a sudden, like an alien possesses our soul, we are doing what we want to do and forget all about letting him take the lead. What happened? It wasn't that we weren't desiring to let him lead - it was that we just didn't know how to do it. We are going to unpack this a bit, and it may not be what you want to hear, but I ...