If you were being persecuted because of your faith, how would you pray to God? Would you ask for relief from your suffering? Would you ask for justice to be done, for your enemies to be punished while you were vindicated? Well, Peter and John’s prayers were completely different. Oh,…

Okay, so after Jesus rose from the dead, why did He reveal Himself in so many different ways? John presents a tender scene in the garden, with Jesus speaking to Mary through her tears, calming her confusion and allowing her to hold Him close, if only for a moment (John…

Jesus’ list of events that precede His coming are becoming ominously familiar. Wars and disturbances? People aren’t just dying in Israel and Gaza but also at the hands of a madman in Maine. Earthquakes? In Morocco last month, one killed almost 3,000 people, while thousands more were injured and left…

To Jesus’ Jewish listeners, this teaching was simply outrageous. In those days, the Pharisees were the good guys, the straight-arrow types. They read the Bible and really tried to put it into practice in their lives. Indeed, the self-description of this Pharisee in verse 12 still puts most of us…

What is our responsibility to the poor, those who, for whatever reason, truly cannot help themselves? That was Lazarus’ situation, as Jesus described it in Luke chapter 16. Verse 20 says he “was laid” at the rich man’s house, which implies that he couldn’t walk there himself. And whatever disease…

When God invites us into fellowship with Him, what gets in the way? Well, what were the excuses the people in Jesus’ parable made for not coming to their host’s dinner? The first one had just bought a piece of land and wanted to inspect it (Luke 14:18). And it…

“He must have had it coming to him.” Isn’t that what we often say when bad things happen to people we know? Oh, we may be sorry for the smoker who gets lung cancer, or the obese person who develops Type 2 diabetes. But being able to link certain behaviors…

So, what’s your plan for the day? Would you like to do something for Jesus? Maybe you’re interested in the sort of mission work Jesus sent the seventy out to do at the beginning of this chapter (Luke 10:1). Or maybe you’ve taken Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan seriously…

God can fix any problem. Any problem. In New Testament times, a woman was completely helpless without a man to care for her and take responsibility for her. And that’s what happened to this widow when her only son died. So, she wasn’t just grieving the loss of a loved…

In their legalistic mania to justify themselves in the sight of God, the Pharisees took God’s Sabbath requirement and blew it up to ridiculous proportions. It was work to have a snack while walking through a field (Luke 6:1-2)? It was work for Jesus to do a miracle of healing…