Category: What do you think?

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

Seeing the Signs of False Teaching

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JEFF TURNER

The Bible gives many warnings about false teachers, making it clear that they are a real danger. From the early parts of the Old Testament, there are repeated signs of people leading others into false worship and wrong belief. This continues into the New Testament, where Jesus speaks about it, and the apostles also give strong warnings. The book of Revelation shows that this problem will remain until the end, with false messiahs and false prophets still appearing.

Because of this ongoing risk, it is important to understand how to recognize such people. One of the first ways to do this is by looking at their lives. Jesus taught that a person can be known by what their life produces. This means watching their actions over time and seeing the direction they follow.

Another helpful step is to observe those who listen to them. The behaviour and desires of their followers can reveal much about the teaching they are receiving. If those who follow show patterns of wrong living or focus on things that do not honour God, it raises concern about the one leading them.

A strong desire for money is also a key warning sign. The New Testament explains that false teachers are often driven by the goal of gaining wealth. They may take advantage of others in order to increase their own resources. This focus on personal gain stands in contrast to the spirit of service taught in Scripture.

Above all, their teaching must be tested. Every claim they make should be measured against the truth found in the Bible. If what they say does not match Scripture, it should not be accepted.

In simple terms, three areas should be examined carefully. Look at how they live, consider their attitude toward money, and test what they teach against God’s Word. These steps help protect believers from being misled.

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matthew 7:15

The lasting legacy a mother can leave through passing on faith to her children

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JEFF TURNER

One of the most powerful things a mother can do is pass on a living faith. Timothy’s grandmother Lois, his mother Eunice, planted the word of God in him from his earliest years. This spiritual investment does not require a woman to step outside the proper order of the home; it is a divine calling that fits beautifully within it. The intimate bond between mother and child creates a sacred space where truth about God and salvation can take deep, enduring root.

Paul also wrote that women are saved through childbearing, a statement sometimes misread as suggesting motherhood earns heaven. What Paul meant reaches far deeper. The shame connected to Eve’s role in the fall is reversed, redeemed, when a woman pours herself into raising a godly generation. When she continues in faith, in love, in purity, she becomes part of something that pushes back against the long shadow of sin in the world.

Consider the mathematics of influence. Lois poured into Eunice. Eunice poured into Timothy. Timothy carried the gospel across the ancient world. One faithful mother. Generations transformed.

For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelled in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well.

2 Timothy 1:5

What Jesus meant by “you will know them by their fruit” in Matthew 7

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JEFF TURNER

Matthew 7’s well-known phrase about knowing people by their fruit is frequently applied to believers as a way of testing whether someone’s faith is genuine, but I believe that reading misses the actual point Jesus was making. Rather than a not a tool for sizing up fellow Christians, isn’t this a warning about false prophets who are skilled at looking like the real thing while leading people astray? I believe Jesus was telling his listeners how to spot a deceiver, not how to audit a believer.

The fruit he was pointing to includes things like moral character, lifestyle choices, and the kind of people who follow and surround the teacher in question.

A false prophet may sound convincing, but a close look at how he lives and who he attracts will reveal the truth.

So then, you will know them by their fruits.

Matthew 7:20


The weight that grows heavier and the fellowship that must notice

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JEFF TURNER

The longer you walk through the tunnel, the heavier the weight becomes, not lighter. Suffering does not diminish simply because you have endured it faithfully. It compounds. It settles into the bones. And this is precisely why the fellowship of believers is not a luxury but a necessity. We are called to carry one another’s burdens when the load grows too heavy for one set of shoulders.

All of us face trials. This is not the experience of the spiritually weak or the theologically deficient. It is the common inheritance of every soul who draws breath in a broken world. And because all of us face them, all of us need the discerning spirit that can look across the room at a brother or sister and perceive that something has shifted, that the weight has quietly grown heavier than it appears.

Where the love of God is genuinely at work, that discernment is not merely a social grace. It is a gift of the Spirit, and it carries with it a solemn responsibility to move toward the one who is sinking rather than past them.

 Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2