If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

— Romans 12:18

We see many conflicts taking place in marriages today. Some households are like mini-battlefields.

It takes two to tangle, as well as to tango though, so we can forget about blaming our spouse. That never does anything but change things for the worse. I think of the innocent young thing who came into the pastor’s office. She was weeping and telling of how miserable and horrible and mean her husband was. Then she said, wiping a tear from her eye, “And he wasn’t that way when I married him.”

The pastor said, “Oh, then you changed him for the worse.”

Do you know what unhappy couples try to do? They want to change their spouse, so they spend their whole lives alternating between various methods of doing so. They try yelling, and it doesn’t work, so then they try silence, and that doesn’t work. So, then they try pouting, and that doesn’t work. Then they try threats, and that doesn’t work. So they conclude therefore, “It’s impossible. Nothing works.”

But God wants us to forgive and to patiently learn love. He wants us to work through these conflicts. Marriage was His idea, and it is ultimately a picture of the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.

Question to ponder:
If you are having problems getting along with someone (perhaps even your spouse), what can you do to make things better?

Love never fails.

— 1 Corinthians 13:8

It is hard to believe, but arranged marriages, for example, those in India, have often fared much better than marriages in the West based on romantic notions of love.

What these people have learned—that we often have forgotten or have been deceived about—is that love is not some exotic bird that comes flapping down with its wings and sets our hearts aflutter and then disappears just as mysteriously. But love, as 1 Corinthians 13 tells us, is a way of treating other people. There is not an emotion in that whole chapter—but there is instruction about how to deal with people. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way” (13:4-5 ESV).

Those who truly love have learned that when people treat other people the right way, that feeling we call “love” will develop. We may have that feeling in great abundance before we are married. However, if we treat our spouse in some contrary manner, we will find, before long, that the mysterious bird has flapped his wings and flown away. Then we say, “Alas, what can we do? There is naught left but the divorce court, because, you see, I don’t love him anymore,” or “I don’t love her anymore. It’s not there any longer. It is gone. It’s dead.”

That is all “a bunch of baloney.” We have been fed a lie, and we have believed it. We have based our whole society on the romanticist concept of love and in so doing we have rejected the biblical teaching about the subject.

Question to ponder:
What can you do to strengthen the commitment you have toward your spouse?

Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another.

— 1 John 4:11

God is the source of all love in this world. More than that, He is love. Whenever people love each other in word or in deed, wherever people learn to put others first, there God is present. There is the Spirit of Jesus.

No man ever loved like Jesus. He brought the far-off God nigh through the channel of the Father’s love. He went about doing good. He demonstrated love. He healed the wounded. He raised the dead. He healed the sick. He did all things well.

It is because Jesus came that we know what love is. As we celebrate love, we should show appreciation for those nearest to us. Let us thank God, the source of love. Love was His idea in the first place.

Question to ponder:
How can we be imitators of Christ in our love and service to others?

… in order that the genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

— 1 Peter 1:7

One of America’s greatest presidents was born on this day. Although he entered the White House as a non-believer, by the time of Gettysburg, there is strong evidence he had met the Savior (especially when seeking solace after the death of his beloved son).

Jesus was on the mind of Lincoln when he died. You history buffs will remember that 1865 was the year that the Civil War ended. In that same year, on Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of these United States, died. He was sitting in a box in Ford’s Theater, not listening to the play, but talking to his wife. He uttered his last words. “Mary, now that the war is over, [it was just over that day] what I would like to do more than anything in the world is to take you on a trip to the Near East. We could go to Palestine. We could go to Galilee where He walked. We could go to Bethlehem, and then we could go up to Jerusalem …”

BANG. The shot rang out that was also heard around the world and ended the life of Abraham Lincoln. The last phrase completed from his lips was, “We could go to Bethlehem.” He never did … in this life.

He became a great president because he was tested by fire. Great and hard-earned wisdom was found in him, as he let the refining work of God’s Spirit ultimately mold his life.

Question to ponder:
When God’s refining fire touches your life, what is your response?

… and He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For all these out of their abundance have put in their gifts for God. But she out of her poverty has put in all the living she had.”

— Luke 21:3-4

Psychologist Abraham Maslow claimed that those who demonstrate the greatest amount of self-love and have the highest self-esteem exercise dominance. In any relationship—a husband and a wife, two friends, or business partners—if one of them has a higher opinion of himself or herself than the other, the one with the highest amount of self-love will dominate. There will often be arrogance. There will be exploitive aspects involved. It does not necessarily follow that the dominant one will love the other.

Which one is able to help other people more? A man who spends all day long in a gym working out with weights, developing huge muscles, standing before the tanning machines, admiring his biceps, or a person who is poor and weak and frail and unmuscular?

I am not sure the answer is clear. It may be that a strong person is more capable of helping people. It may be that Arnold Schwarzenegger is more capable of helping people than Mother Teresa was. However, it does not at all follow logically that he has helped more people than she has. Many of the world’s greatest people have been people who have not been strong, muscular, and healthy at all, but they have sought to do for the Lord the best they could. The key is to serve others, including the widow and orphan, whenever we can.

Question to ponder:
Are you taking the opportunities you get to serve the Lord and others?

… just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before Him in love.

— Ephesians 1:4

I know a friend who just went through major surgery and then, after he was home and thought all was well, a massive infection was found. The doctors had to go back in and cleanse that out. That is like sanctification. Sanctification deals with corruption. A beautiful apple, when cut in half, re­veals one dark spot. It is obviously rotten, and the spot must be cut out. God is purifying us in this life through sanctification.

The holiness of God is imputed to us by faith as we trust in Him, and His holiness is infused into us gradually in sanctification, as we become more and more pure. We need to pray that the impartation of the holiness of Christ might be ours. We need to pray that God would make us holy people. You can be sure that as you become holier, you will become happier in your life. We will never be completely holy before we reach heaven, but the furthest we can come is the longing to be more holy. The strange fact is that the more holy we are, the less we will be concerned with our own holiness and more concerned with the welfare of others.

Question to ponder:
How is it that the more focused we are on others, the happier we find ourselves?

…yet we know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

— Galatians 2:16

If God had called us to climb Mt. Everest in order that we might have eternal life, there would be millions lined up to try it. However, He calls us to no such arduous task as that, but to a simple trust in Christ as our Savior. To do that, we must realize that we are unworthy and undeserving. We do not merit eternal life, and it is, therefore, a humbling experience to receive Christ. We must acknowledge our sin; we must acknowledge our unworthiness; we must acknowledge our guilt, and cast ourselves upon Him and His mercy.

When we realize that the law, and all the works of keeping the law, will not make us right with God, we are ready to have our own self-righteousness smashed. As we come to Jesus Christ, we can be justified—made right with God. This is justification—that God out of His mercy forgives us our sins, clothes us in the righteousness of Christ and looks at us through Him, as if we had never sinned.

Question to ponder:
Picture yourself clean and beautiful before God in Christ Jesus. What is your response?

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how shall it be made salty? It is from then on good for nothing but to be thrown out and to be trampled underfoot by men.

— Matthew 5:13

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to get out of their “saltshakers.” They are very comfortable. Why some of them even have stained glass walls! These people don’t want to get in contact with the “meat,” because maybe it is already beginning to get rotten and corrupted. They don’t want to get their hands on it, and so they avoid it. They are not functioning as salt.

Salt has a number of qualities. It stings. If you get salt in a wound, you will know it is there. Salt also heals. We are to be the healing work of Christ in the world, and that does sting. Sometimes people don’t like the thought of causing that uncomfortable feeling, and so they don’t get involved with that healing work of Christ.

Another thing salt does is to bring out the flavor in many dishes. That is what Christians should do. Salt also, of course, preserves. We, as Christians, are called to preserve that which is best in our culture. We are called to be salt, to go out and bring out the best in others.

Question to ponder:
Can you think of a recent time where you or some other believer has acted as salt in our decaying culture?

To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi …

— Philippians 1:1

While visiting recently with a couple who did not know Christ, we talked about what a Christian was and I said, “Have you ever met a real live saint?” They assured me they had not.

“Well,” I said, “how would you like to meet one?”

They asked, “Do you know one?”

I said, “Yes, I do. In fact, there is one right here today.” I reached out my hand and said, “Meet Saint James, for I am a Saint. Every Christian is a saint, set aside, and sanctified unto God as kings and princes unto God our Father.”

This sainthood is achieved not by our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ alone. Therefore, a saint is a forgiven sinner. God makes us saints by His Holy Spirit, forming us into His image. A saint is a person who is set apart for God’s use, a person who is being sanctified. A saint is a person who belongs to Jesus Christ, and that is who we are.

Question to ponder:
Could you live differently before the watching world today, knowing that you are indeed a saint?

For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.

— Psalm 33:9

Whether God created the universe or not makes all the difference in the world. The teaching of the “godless universe” has ramifications beyond the world of science.

It is not true that all scientists believe in evolution. One scientist who is a Christian observes, “Parents can work hard to educate their children to be patriots and morally upright citizens. But four years of college of the kind I experienced—where I was surrounded by a culture of drugs, sexual libertinism, political radicalism, and little homework—can destroy the efforts of the best parents in America.”

If that doesn’t do it, he says a couple of years of graduate school are almost certain to destroy any remaining vestige of belief in God, moral absolutes, morality, Americanism, patriotism, or any other of our values. That, my friends, is the consequence of the teaching of evolution in our public schools and universities and colleges—like the one this scientist attended. It is a mortal danger to the lives and souls of young people and has brought tragic consequences.

Question to ponder:
How does a godless outlook affect morals?