Category: What do you think?

The dead don’t watch the news | Releasing our grip on the world

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

Those who rest in cemeteries hold no opinions about the season’s trending content. They are not concerned with the movements of financial markets, indifferent to the fortunes of sports franchises, and entirely unaffected by the latest shifts in fashion. Death has done what nothing else could: it has severed the connection between those souls and the world that once occupied so much of their attention.

First John 2:15 presses this image into the life of the believer: do not love the world or the things in the world. If the love of the world occupies the heart, the love of the Father cannot. These are not compatible allegiances.

The reasoning behind this command is not that the created world is evil in itself, but that the world as a system, with its values, its powers, and its appetites, is passing away. It is a temporary arrangement, already under judgement, already in the process of dissolution. To invest one’s deepest love in what is passing is to build one’s life on something that will not hold.

The believer has been crucified with Christ. This is not a metaphor for mild detachment; it is a description of a real severance. Reckoned as dead to this world’s systems, we are simultaneously alive to God in Jesus. That life does not compete with the world; it simply belongs to a different order entirely.

The invitation, then, is not primarily about what we give up, but about what we are freed to embrace. Release the grip on what is fading, and find in Christ something that does not fade. Let the world go. Concentrate on Him.

The world is passing away and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God continues to live forever.

1 John 2:17

The death that could not hold him

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JOHN COPIC

Consider the audacity of Peter’s sermon. Standing before thousands, he reaches not for flattery or careful diplomacy, but for the ancient scriptures, and he makes a declaration that would shake the foundations of everything his listeners assumed they understood.

David, he argues, was not writing about himself. How could he be? His tomb was visible, his body long since given to corruption. When Psalm 16 speaks of a Holy One who would not see decay, it reaches past David entirely, pointing toward One whose death could not hold him, whose resurrection would vindicate every promise God had ever made.

This is the breathtaking logic of Peter’s preaching: the resurrection is not a surprise ending. It is the fulfilment of a plan laid before the foundation of the world. What appeared to be Rome’s victory, what seemed like the triumph of jealousy and lawless hands, was in truth the sovereignly ordained moment around which all of history turns.

And here is where it touches us, wherever we stand today. Some in that Pentecost crowd had cried “Crucify him” with genuine hatred in their hearts. Yet mercy was offered freely. Guilt does not disqualify a soul from grace; it simply reveals how desperately grace is needed.

The question Peter’s sermon always asks is the same one that echoes still: knowing what you now know about this Jesus, what will you do?

He who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification.

Romans 4:25

When your eyes deceive your soul

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WILLIAM KILLIAN

There is a quiet peril in trusting only what your eyes can measure. We navigate the physical world admirably enough, reading hunger, sensing danger, smelling smoke before we see the flame. These senses are gifts, marvellous and necessary. Yet they were never designed to carry the full weight of our most consequential decisions.

Consider Lot, Abraham’s nephew, standing at a crossroads with the whole of the land before him. He lifted his eyes, surveyed the Jordan Valley, and saw what any reasonable person would see: lush, well-watered ground, rich as the garden of Eden, fertile as Egypt along the Nile. By every natural measure, it was the obvious choice, the sensible choice. And it destroyed him.

He journeyed east, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, from camping near Sodom, to residing in Sodom, to leading within Sodom, until judgment rained down and everything he had built by sight lay in ashes. The text does not spare us the commentary: the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

How often do we perform our own version of this same calculation? We weigh salary, location, opportunity, and comfort, factoring in everything visible and measurable, while the unseen promises of God gather dust in the corner of our thinking.

Faith is not the absence of wisdom; it is wisdom’s completion. It incorporates what the eye cannot reach, what the senses cannot verify, what only the word of God can illuminate.

Abraham, by contrast, rested in promise rather than prospect. He did not need the best land because he trusted the God who owns all land.

 for we walk by faith, not by sight

2 Corinthians 5:7

When the right one shows up everything changes

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DON HEBERT

There is a moment, familiar to anyone who has spent a sleepless night straining after something that will not come, when the dawn breaks and everything changes. The disciples knew this moment. They had fished through the dark hours and caught nothing. Empty nets. Aching arms. The quiet humiliation of expertise that yields no fruit.

And then a voice from the shore.

What the Gospel of John shows us in this tender epilogue is not merely a miracle of fish. It is a revelation of character. Who is Jesus now, after the resurrection? Who is he to us today, as we labour in our ordinary lives, often without visible result? The answer comes not in thunder, but over a charcoal fire with bread and fish already prepared.

He is the one who helps. Not grudgingly, not conditionally, but with an abundance that breaks the nets of our expectations. He is the one who welcomes. Peter, soaking wet and weighted with shame, stumbled out of the sea toward the very Lord he had denied. And Jesus did not flinch. The fire was already lit. The meal was already waiting.

Notice this carefully: Jesus had provision ready before they arrived. The catch they hauled in was not needed. It was grace, layered upon grace, extravagant and unhurried.

This is the risen Christ, glorified and reigning, yet stooping to hand bread to tired friends. He has not grown distant. He has not grown cold. He remains, today, the helper of the weary, the welcomer of the ashamed, and the provider of every true need.

Come. The breakfast is ready.

 Therefore let’s approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our need.

Hebrews 4:16

Seeking God Through Prayer and Fasting: A Call to Revival

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BOB RICHMOND

The promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 is both simple and demanding: if God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek his face, and turn from sin, he will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. The responsibility falls squarely on believers, not on the surrounding culture. God is not expecting lost people to act saved; he is waiting for saved people to start acting like it.

Fasting Is Not About Earning Favor

Fasting is not a religious performance or a way to impress God. It is a deliberate act of stripping away distractions, intensifying prayer, and humbling the flesh so the spirit can seek God more fully. Ezra proclaimed a fast before leading God’s people through dangerous territory without military protection, and God delivered them. Nineveh turned from its wickedness after fasting and mourning, and God relented from judgment. The pattern is consistent throughout Scripture.

Remove the Noise

Constant anxiety over global events produces no fruit. God created people to handle the challenges of their personal reality, not the weight of every crisis broadcast daily. For many, turning off the noise and refocusing on God is itself a meaningful spiritual discipline.

What God Is Waiting For

Revival does not begin with changing the culture. It begins with honest self-examination, genuine humility, and wholehearted seeking of God. His eyes are open. His ears are attentive. The question is whether his people will respond now, or later, or never.

and My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14