What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are! Matthew 23:15 (NLT) We need to stop trying to fit Jesus into our cute little ideas of Him. So many Christians seem to depict Jesus as a mild-mannered type of guy who walked around making the peace sign all day. But we’re not going to reach the world for Jesus if we keep portraying Him this way. That picture doesn’t appeal to our world, and it isn’t even accurate. Read our verse today and you’ll see that Jesus had no problem confronting people with truth! Many people hold …

Ever be filled and stimulated with the [Holy] Spirit. Ephesians 5:18 (AMPC) If you stop spending time with Holy Spirit, you will begin to rely on just your own strength, and this is a miserable place to be. Without time in His presence, you won’t have any peace, clarity or focus for what God has called you to do. When you stop spending time with Holy Spirit, you lose that loving feeling for Him and for what He loves. More accurately, you lose sight of it. It’s a temporary symptom that results from not enough time with Him. You might begin to harbour resentment. You’ll pray, Lord, use me, and then complain, I feel used. And often this is just because you’ve stopped relying on …

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the force of your life. Proverbs 4:23 (NLT) Good people who love Jesus can develop an overwhelming desire to do wrong. Be careful not to get complacent. Just because you love Jesus doesn’t mean that you can daydream about doing things you know are wrong without consequence. If you allow yourself to focus on something long enough, it will affect your life. If you watch, listen or think about the wrong things, your heart will begin to produce what you don’t like: lust, anger, envy or a desire for things that cause pain and destruction in your life. This is why it’s so important for married people to be careful. You need to focus on the …

Then Peter said, “Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself.” Acts 5:3 (NLT) Acts 5:1–11 tells the story of how Ananias, a member of the early church, sold a piece of property and gave the money to the church. But before he did, he and his wife Sapphira decided to keep a portion of the proceeds for themselves. This wasn’t a problem. Peter said, The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away (v.4, NLT). The problem was that they lied and said that they were giving the full amount. Who knows why …

For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. Matthew 15:19 (NLT) Your heart is like soil with perfect growing conditions. It grows whatever you stick in it. In good conditions, the ground will grow anything. It doesn’t have a mind of its own. You can’t tell the ground to only grow peas and ignore every other seed that is planted or that blows in. It grows whatever comes its way. Your heart is the same, which is why it’s so important to protect it. When you fill your heart with something by giving it all your time and attention, you’ll develop a passion for it. This fact can be your best friend or your downfall, depending how …