The Plumbline

As with most 'baby Christians', I was one of those who actually believed that everything would come out all right - nothing bad would ever happen to good people because God makes everything work together for their good. Only good things are gonna happen to Christians, right? Wrong! It came as a surprise to me that bad things still happen to good people! What I failed to recognize is that God often takes us through periods of "adjustment" in order for his vision to be accomplished within us. He sometimes has to "enlarge" us enough to see what it is that he intends for us. The 'bad' isn't really meant to hurt us, but to make us see a new aspect of his keeping touch, understand a little more about his healing hands, and come to a place where we follow him no matter how the circumstances attempt to dictate otherwise. Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or wh...

Conspiracy is not something most of us would consider ourselves as being part of on most days - it is something we'd like to say applies to those spy movies on the big screen. We probably think of that as something from a James Bond movie - action packed, adventure galore, and intrigue at every turn. If we really look, we will probably identify that there are elements of "conspiracy" pretty commonly occurring in our lives almost everyday. Yup, you and I are 'conspirators' of some sort! Don't bad-mouth each other, friends. It's God's Word, his Message, his Royal Rule, that takes a beating in that kind of talk. You're supposed to be honoring the Message, not writing graffiti all over it. God is in charge of deciding human destiny. Who do you think you are to meddle in the destiny of others? (James 4:11-12)  Isn't it obvious that conspirators lose out, while the thoughtful win love and trust? (Proverbs 14:22) To conspire means that we agree se...