The Periodically

Introduction Our IMAGE high school group has been discussing the topic of relationships and friendships over the past couple weeks. One of these topics was about having unsaved friends and how to interact with them. I'm very excited for our kids to be thinking about this more as we want to have a youth culture in our church that is reaching out to others with the good news of Christ and inviting them into our group to experience the love of Christ while partaking of our community within the church. Where do we get the Idea of Relationships? Relationships were started from the very beginning of time and actually even before that in eternity past. We see in Genesis 1:26 that the triune God has relationship with Himself and from that He creates a man who is meant for relationship in His image (Gen 1:17). That God made man both for relationship with Himself and with other as well (Gen 2:18). Relationship are from God and are "very good" (Gen 1:31). Take a look at Eccl...

I just got an email from someone who is going through a bible study workbook. She asked about the veracity of following statement:                “Every circumstance of life is to be accepted willingly and joyfully, without murmuring,                               complaint, or disappointment, much less resentment. There is no exception” She raises a very important question. This is a very strong and all-encompassing. My first thought was “Is that really true?” It came from a very respected source and I wanted to be very cautious before I responded. Because if this is in fact true, there’s a significant amount of sins committed by God’s people that are undetected. If this is true, I have a lot of soul-searching to do. So, what does the Bible have to say about disappointment? ...

I recently expressed my desire to volunteer again with a secular program I'd given volunteer hours to in the past. I was saddened when I learned that they did not need my volunteer role to exist anymore. Being sad isn’t a bad thing. I believe sadness is a tool that God gives us to give us energy and focus to think of how we can best glorify Him. It did just that for me…at first. I was surprised at how long my sadness lasted. I began to dwell on the decision. I began to question the decision. I allowed my emotions and sadness to take control over my thinking. Why was this a struggle for me? I began to look at my heart and saw that I had an idol of wanting my life to go the way that I believed it should go (James 4:1). I had built this construct or mini-kingdom of how my life was supposed to go, and God in His loving sovereignty was not giving me what I wanted (James 4:3). My heart began to rebel as I wanted what I wanted (my mini-kingdom) and n...