The Plumbline

“I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” (Matthew 17:20) Have you ever tried to move a mountain? I have moved sheds, piles of gravel, stones, and the like, but never a mountain! I have moved wheelbarrows full of dirt, filling flower beds and the like, but never the entire mountain - not even a hill! There is something here Jesus wants us to understand: Faith isn't measured as we measure things. It is measured in the hands of God because only he sees the full potential in that small seed of faith. What insurmountable thing or looming challenge do you have over your head right now? Are you trusting God with it? Have you given him the 'little faith' you have, trusting him to show you the full potential wrapped up in that 'tiny seed' of faith you bring to him? Trusting God with what we don't understand or have the ability to fac...

You who love the Lord, hate evil! He protects the lives of his godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked. (Psalm 97:10) With so many changes coming at rapid-fire succession around the world, we might want to crawl in a hole and just hide out until the dust settles, but that isn't God's plan. His plan is to protect the lives of his godly people - allowing them to be at peace in unsettling times. We may not realize just how much God wants his people to be 'at peace'. It begins with being at peace with him, one another, then the issues we face as humans on this earth. When that peace gets disturbed, we begin to allow all manner of doubts, untruth, and troubling thoughts to consume our minds, influence our emotions, and bring illness into our lives. Rather than fearing evil, we must learn to hate it without embracing its influence! The power of the wicked is limited. We all need to hear that one and remember it whenever we are inundated on every side by th...

Show me what you want me to do. You are my God. Let your good Spirit lead me over level ground. (Psalm 143:10) Sometimes we want level ground pathways in life, but they just don't seem to come. We find ourselves in all manner of 'uneven' paths, trying us from every angle spiritually, emotionally, financially, and even physically. They aren't meant to stop our forward progress with Jesus, but they certainly put a 'kink' in it at times! It is never a bad prayer to ask God to show us to that level ground in life. In fact, he'd relish the opportunity to take you from the 'unevenness' of life's challenges into the 'evenness' of his peace, presence, and purpose. You might find yourself there right now - facing challenges that you'd never thought you'd have to face. The more 'uneven' the path right now, the more you can count on God helping you navigate to 'even' ground once again. It might not seem like it, but that brut...

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. (Corrie Ten Boom) Even if I walk through a valley as dark as the grave, I will not be afraid of any danger, because you are with me. (Psalm 23:4) In the midst of some of your darkest moments, how hard is it to just sit still and trust? Do you find yourself trying to figure out a way to somehow change the circumstances, so you don't have to be in the darkness any longer? Do you chafe in the waiting? If you find yourself in a dark place right now, take heart because God is likely moving you from one place to another and you just don't know the destination yet! The dark place may actually be a tunnel - the train needs the tunnel to go through 'immovable' objects in its path, doesn't it? There are lots of 'immovable' objects in our path that seem to only create challenges we don't know how to overcome. Did you stop to c...

Don’t worry—I am with you. Don’t be afraid—I am your God. I will make you strong and help you. I will support you with my right hand that brings victory. (Isaiah 41:10) If most of us started each new day with this promise in mind, I wonder just how differently we'd face the issues of the day? I imagine we might just not be as haggard at the end of the day, exhibiting just a bit more wisdom with the actions of the day, and perhaps with a bit more accomplished than we'd see without his help. The instructions: 1) stop your worrying, 2) let your fear go, 3) trust your God, 4) lean into his strength, and 5) you will feel his support. Stop worrying - because God isn't deserting us, but going with us, having prepared a way before us. If we'd just get this simple instruction worked into our brains, reminding our emotions that they aren't in control, God is, then maybe we'd find it a bit easier to turn away those worries when they start to creep in. Let go of your fears....

The Lord will keep good people safe, but evil people will have many troubles. (Proverbs 12:21) Josh Billings said, "Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing those you hold well." We might not always be dealt the 'best hand' in life, but we can 'play the cards' we are dealt to the best of our ability, all the while trusting God with the outcome. We 'hold' certain cards in life, some good while others are not as good. I learned a long time ago it didn't do much good to complain about the hand one receives. It is best to take those 'cards' to Jesus, ask him for the wisdom to 'play them well' and then trust him with the rest. The Lord will keep good people safe - these words ring true time and time again in our days, even when we don't realize how much 'safety' he has provided along our path. We want a 'clear path', but we don't see what goes into clearing it because God has done all that work ahea...

When the Israelites saw Pharaoh and his army coming toward them, they were very frightened and cried to the Lord for help. They said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did you bring us out here in the desert to die? We could have died peacefully in Egypt; there were plenty of graves in Egypt. We told you this would happen! In Egypt we said, ‘Please don’t bother us. Let us stay and serve the Egyptians.’ It would have been better for us to stay and be slaves than to come out here and die in the desert.” But Moses answered, “Don’t be afraid! Don’t run away! Stand where you are and watch the Lord save you today. You will never see these Egyptians again. You will not have to do anything but stay calm. The Lord will do the fighting for you.” (Exodus 14:10-14) There are a lot of times God brings us to a certain point in our lives and all we do is 'stand there and watch', hoping for the Lord to do all the work. The very next verse is God's directive to MOVE. In other w...

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. (Ellen Glasgow) No, a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people. (Romans 2:29) The Apostle Paul is dealing with a whole lot of 'we are better than they are' mentality - it is 'better to be a Jew' than a Gentile kind of thing. Isn't it silly to compare ourselves to others by what we see as 'superior' in ourselves compared to what we see as 'inferior' in others? The most profound thing he pointed out to those who opposed Christ as the Messiah was that a changed heart is produced by the Spirit of God, not some 'act' or 'practice' man engages in. A changed heart is God-produced, God-ordained, and God-blessed. The 'we are better' mentality comes with prideful attitude of seekin...

Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you! I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy. (Psalm 63:3-6) When you aren't 'dealt' the hand you expected, how do you respond? To be honest with you, I don't always immediately praise God for the 'lousy hand'. Sometimes I gripe about it, chafe against it, and get a little too 'me' focused right there in the midst of the 'hardship' I am enduring. "Me" comes first and "me" is not feeling like it is getting the 'best shake' in the moment, so "me" begins to resist and complain. Been there? Got the shirt and wore it out? Good! Sometimes our life is even turned upside down by the 'hand' we receive - what was up is now down, and the ground underneath us is quite shaky. When we 'receive' that 'hand', we might just fo...

  Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his wisdom and knowledge and riches! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods!   For who among us can know the mind of the Lord? Who knows enough to be his counselor and guide?   And who could ever offer to the Lord enough to induce him to act?   For everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory. To him be glory evermore. (Romans 11:33-36) When was the last time you stopped to consider the awesomeness of God's protection and intensely focused care over your lives? If it has been a while, today could be a great day to just 'stop' and 'ponder'. There is nothing we do that 'induces' him to act - there is nothing we do to 'keep things in motion' within our lives. All that exists within our lives is the direct result of his overwhelming love and care for us. We partake of his wisdom - through the study of his Word and the exce...

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him— we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise. (Romans 5:1-2) God wants to do so much for us. We are to enter into what he is doing in and through our lives. Back in the day, we didn't lock doors when we left our homes - now we secure them with multiple locks and security screen doors. There are also doors within us, too. The doors we keep securely "latched" in our lives so as to keep others out, limiting our "exposure" to others. These doors act to keep others out and to keep our "messy lives" under wraps! God's plan is to have tho...

Are you a 'radical' when it comes to change? Radical: of or going to the root or origin of something. If you haven't really thought about what "radical change" is, you might be a little surprised to find out it is change which goes after the "root" or "origin" of something in order to so totally change what has become "traditional" or "normal" in one's life. If a business wants to "re-invent" themselves because they have been losing customers to some other big-name chain with a newer look, what do they do? They go through some "radical change" to make us believe this is the store we want to be shopping at instead of the other guys. J.C. Penney did just that - they changed up the lines they carried, took out a whole bunch of their stock, remodeled the interiors of the stores to be more "hip", but they lost business! Most of us who shopped at Penney's did so for a reason - the consist...

But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:23-24) I like to revisit familiar passages from time to time because God is always so faithful to bring something to mind within these familiar words. I don't know about you but it seems like people are always looking for the next 'new thing' in this world. App...

God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. (Romans 15:4) Ever stop to consider what it is that God may do next in your life? I imagine things, but sometimes my imagination gets a little carried away, while at others God outdoes anything I could ever possibly imagine! We don't want to miss what God is doing, or is about to do in and through us. God calls for us to be alert. Alertness is the ability to be keenly aware of your circumstances - so in tune with what is going on around us nothing misses our focus. Rarely, if ever, do we enter into this realm of true "alertness" - we almost always miss something despite our efforts to do otherwise! In fact, we most often think of alertness as being awake! God expects more, though. He expects us to be aware! There is a condition of heart and mind that is fully aware and totally attentive to the move...