The Plumbline

Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said, The old life is a grass life, its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers; Grass dries up, flowers wilt, God’s Word goes on and on forever. This is the Word that conceived the new life in you. (1 Peter 1:24-25) For the past few days we have been looking intently at God's Word - how it impacts our lives, changing us from the inside out. Today's passage contains another important aspect of God's Word that we don't want to overlook - the ability for God's Word to 'conceive' new life in us. Think for a moment about how 'conception' happens in the natural sense. Two completely separate objects intersect and within that intersection the two become one. T...

Have you ever lost one of your children in a large mall, or at the park? I have and I can describe for you the moment of sheer panic when I realized they were gone - not just from my sight, but gone! They had disappeared quicker than I was able to appreciate and that moment of panic gripped my soul, sent my emotions into a spiral, and began to play scenes of terror across the screen of my imagination. I wonder what it would be like to see our 'separation' from God through is eyes...would we begin to see the extreme scenes of terror that cross his screen, as well? I think God has things in control, unlike us, but he is certainly deeply affected by any separation between us! So who can separate us? What can come between us and the love of God’s Anointed? Can troubles, hardships, persecution, hunger, poverty, danger, or even death? The answer is, absolutely nothing. But no matter what comes, we will always taste victory through Him who loved us. Romans 8:35,37 Before I go ...

Have you ever seen someone so good with their skinning knife they can just peel away the hide of an animal without a rip or tear, no waste of any of the meat just below that skin? I have seen some fishermen able to fillet their catch with such skill not even one bone is found in the fillet. How do they learn this skill? I think it comes to them through practice and with the employment of the right 'tool' to do the job at hand. There is comfort in knowing that God means what he says and his Word will come to pass. His Word is like the scalpel in the skilled hands of a surgeon or the knife in the hands of the skilled hunter. As a nurse, I have seen the skillful use of the scalpel - dissecting away the finest of tissue to protect the healthy tissue and to expose the tissue that has become devitalized by disease or decay. I have also seen the damage done by a "blade" in the hands of one not trained or at all skilled in its use. The difference is beyond description. God ...

There are commands in the scripture that are not 'optional' behaviors or attitudes. We are to embrace them as a way of life regardless of how we feel. Too many of us are reliant upon 'feelings-based' actions. If we feel like it, we do. If we don't feel the urge, we don't. Don't love the world's ways is not optional. Don't love the world's goods is also not optional. Neither of these commands are 'optional' or dependent on how we feel at the moment. We might want to gloss over these commands, but there is much value in considering them as guiding principles in our lives as the consequences of being too caught up in the ways of this world system or in seeking after what it offers carry some heavy burdens for us. When we are in love with this world and what it offers us, we isolate ourselves from God - although we may align with others in this world, isolation from him is just not good. Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the...

For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are—high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean—nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us. ( Romans 8:38-39   TLB ) Separation occurs wherever there is a point of some type of parting. When I wash clothes, I 'separate' them into stacks of dark, medium, and light colors. Why? Those darker ones have the potential of causing me a great deal of extra work if they get in with the lighter ones because they can actually leave stains on the lighter ones. It makes sense to separate them into these piles because of the potential of one to affect the other in a negative way. I have been at some homes of people where even the cans of food are stacked neatly in rows of whatev...

Separation is a place or point of parting having occurred or about to occur. As infants, we grew quite attached to our parent and any degree of separation gave us a sense of panic, lending to periods of fitfully crying until we were once again reunited with that parent. We somehow equated them being out of sight as being unreachable, uncaring, or unavailable to us. It sent us into periods of what some may even call "panic".  I wonder if we ever quite experience that degree of panic over our separation from God's grace - maybe that is what draws us to him in the first place and keeps us coming back when we pull away on occasion. Maybe we experience a little separation anxiety when we are 'out of sync' with him - giving us that moment when we "panic" because we see the distance which has been allowed in our relationship. Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or dang...