Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

— 2 Corinthians 5:17

Can the leopard change its spots? Can the Ethio­pian change his skin? Of course not. No more than human beings can change their nature; but that is pre­cisely what Christ does. He doesn’t merely change our outward behavior; He changes our nature. He comes within us and plants therein a new man and a new nature—a new creation created by God—a new you.

In Christ, we now desire things we didn’t desire before. Christ did that to me. God placed a screw­driver in my “wanter” and turned it upside down, and to my utter amazement, I now wanted things I had never wanted before.

Charles Spurgeon said that if you were to take a hog out of the mud and the mire, out of the trough and the herd, and by some magic wand transform him into a prince sitting upon a throne, he would not be changed as much as when God Almighty by His grace transforms a depraved sinner into a prince of the Royal Realm. He is now a child of the King of kings, living in a dominion that has neither end nor limit of extent.

Question to ponder:
How can your new nature be nourished today?

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

— Matthew 11:28

Jesus is inviting us to come to Him with our burdens, to take our troubles to the foot of the cross and lay them down.

One verse I particularly like is found in I Peter 5:7 where he says: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” The Greek verb used here for casting shows a person with a great burden on his back, coming to Christ and rolling that burden off into the arms of Jesus.

What burden is right now weighing you down, tensing your muscles, robbing you of your serenity? Cast all your care upon Him.

It seems so simple to take it all to Jesus. It is simple, but it is not easy. We tend to take our problems to the Lord, then five minutes later we go back and pick them up to carry them again. If we shall learn to leave them there at the foot of the cross, we must learn to trust Him. Instead of picking our burden back up, we must say, “I have given this burden to the Lord. It is in His capable hands, and I can leave them there.” That is how we find rest.

Question to ponder:
What are the burdens you are carrying today? Take them to the foot of the cross and leave them there.

A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench.

— Isaiah 42:3

Are you a winner or a loser? It’s obvious which is preferable. But I’m certain there are some who feel they are born losers. Maybe they didn’t do well in school; they embarrassed themselves and perhaps their parents. They haven’t done well in the workplace, having perhaps been fired from numerous jobs. Even their home life has not worked out so well. It seems like they just can’t do anything right. They have two left feet.  They are ambidextrous, but neither one of their hands works well.

And yet, my friend, take heart. God did not make you to be a loser. He created you to be a winner, and that is what He is able to make you into. God make us for His purpose and when we feel discouraged and sad about our lives, we can be reassured that He is the perfecter of our lives, our faith, our past, and our future.

Sometimes we feel weak and powerless. Sometimes we feel worn out and as burned out as a smoldering wick. It is in our weakness that we can find His love and in our need that we find our God to be all sufficient. Let God bind your broken heart and watch Him make you whole again.

Question to ponder:
What are the broken pieces in your life? Hand them over to the Lord today.

…Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

— Hebrews 10:25

Many people offer a multitude of reasons as to why they don’t go to church. But they tend to gloss over the real reason. They don’t want to go.

I talked to a man one time who told me all the reasons why he didn’t go to church: he’d rather stay home and read the funny paper, he had to work … he had all sorts of excuses. I said, “Would you like for me to tell you the real reason you don’t go to church?”

He was startled, but he said, “Yes.”

I said, “All right. This is the real reason why you don’t go to church: Very simply, it is because you have never been born again.”

Many people think you don’t have to go church to be a Christian. But if Christ is truly in you, you will want to go to church. Corporate worship is for our benefit. We need each other in the Body of Christ. As logs in a fire need to stay together to burn, so a log by itself will see its fire go out. We are a body of believers, and none of us can function alone.

Question to ponder:
Is there more you could do with your own church experience to get more out of it?

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

— Deuteronomy 6:6-7

The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).  I think it needs to be made very clear what God is talking about here.

Someone said, “I can’t understand it. What did I do wrong? My son is involved in dope, sin, adultery, and rebellion. I can’t understand it. I trained him up in the way he should go. I sent him to Sunday school every week.”

It’s great to send your children to Sunday school, but if that’s all you did, it wouldn’t be enough. The Old Testament makes it abundantly plain that parents have a duty to train their children in the home daily.

However, if you did all you could to teach and guide, pray for and pray with your child, and that child is a prodigal, take heart. God Himself is portrayed by Jesus in Luke 15 as the Father of the Prodigal Son. Do what He did, watch, wait, pray, and remember that the end of the story is yet to be told.

If you still have a chance, use every opportunity, when you walk and talk, day and night, to teach and, above all, to live out God’s Word before your children.

Question to ponder:
What can you do in your family situation to strengthen your family’s relation to the Lord?

Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man.

— Genesis 9:6

I believe the Bible teaches capital punishment and that our crime problem would plummet if justice were faithfully and swiftly carried out.

One time after speaking on the matter of abortion someone said to me, “Do you believe in the sanctity of life?”

I said, “Yes, I do.”

“Then I assume you are against capital punishment.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why not? You’re not being consistent.”

“No sir. You are not being consistent. I believe in the sanctity of life and it is simply because man was made in the image of God that God declared, ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ And we know that the nature of the punishment fits the heinousness of the crime.”

Is it not strange that those who speak most loudly in favor of abortion and infanticide and euthanasia are the people who are usually most opposed to capital punishment? They are willing to kill the innocent, but they are not willing to kill the guilty. That is inconsistency. As someone said, “It is interesting that today we kill our babies and baby our killers.”

Question to ponder:
What are your thoughts on capital Punishment?

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.

— Psalm 139:13

One of the great evils in our time is abortion, and it is done in the name of “choice.” The only “choice” the abortionists ever give anybody is “Tuesday or Friday? When do you want to have the abortion?” Any of you who may be pro-choice, I just want to say to you this: “You ought to get down on your knees and thank God that your mother wasn’t pro-choice.”

It is interesting that abortions for incest, rape, and the life of the mother constitute less than 2% of the total number of abortions in this country, and yet they constitute 98% of the rhetoric of the pro-abortionists.

Thankfully, many Christians are providing alternatives to abortion. There are now more crisis pregnancy centers than abortion clinics. Many are seeing abortion for what it is and are repenting of having anything to do with it. And there is mercy and grace from the Lord for those who repent and call on Jesus.

Question to ponder:
What can you do to help those who are struggling with a crisis pregnancy or the pain of a past abortion?

The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

— Philippians 4:9

The Bible says, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Here we find the Biblical secret of mental health. Actually, it is a secret not only of mental health but also of a happy life, of a positive attitude, of a winsome personality, of ad­vancement in life, of acceptance by others. Certainly these are things that every one of us desires. You can be sure that losers and loners do none of these things that are revealed in this tremendous chapter of the New Testament. That is precisely why they are losers and loners. People who are ever-failures in life are such because they ignore, to their own detriment, these great teachings from the Word of God.

It takes discipline to train the mind, just as it takes discipline to train the body. But it pays us back well when we focus on positive things. In the big picture, for the Christian our thinking should be positive because the overall reality is positive. Our past is forgiven, our present is abundant life in Christ, and our future is eternal life with Jesus in heaven.

Question to ponder:
Do you find you tend to think positively or negatively?

Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

— 2 Timothy 2:22

We live in a world that is constantly bombarding us with all manner of sinful thoughts and actions so that our consciences become continually more and more desensitized. This is what the world does; this is what Hollywood does. It continually desensitizes us until we come to accept things that at one time we would never accept at all.

“Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?” (2 King 8:13) says one character in the Old Testament. He was appalled when someone suggested such a great sin. Yet time went by and guess what; he did it.

What a time of desensitization we have been living through. It is tragic. I hope that our consciences are startled awake by the Holy Spirit, even as a cattle prod would cause a cow to jump and run, and we might realize how sinful sin is.

If you’re tempted, then flee. Be like Joseph when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. Run from the temptation and don’t look back. Ben Franklin once put it this way, “‘Tis easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.”

Question to ponder:
Is there any situation tempting you that you need to cut yourself off from?

Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

— Romans 7:24-25

What is salvation? It is essentially the deliverance from sin. In our society today, that would seem rather irrelevant because we have got­ten rid of sin. Several years ago, a famed psychiatrist authored a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin? It has evaporated. Bring up the subject of sin on some talk show and people would look in stark horror at you.

Sin, of course, is any disobedience to God. Salvation is deliverance from disobedience to God. You cannot have a salvation which becomes a license to disobey God; yet there are those who hold that position today.

The great English pastor, Charles Spurgeon, put it this way: “The amazing thing is not that everybody is not saved. The amazing thing is that anybody is saved.”

Think of heaven as a place where there is not even the possibility of so much as a sinful thought. That is total deliverance from sin. In our lives here on earth God frees us from sin by forgiving us, but He also frees us from committing sins because we walk with Him.

Question to ponder:
Can you think of a time when the Lord kept you from sinning?