Haven of rest Evangelical Ministries, Ota Nigeria

  April 25 Not Like Yesterday David H. Roper Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  Deuteronomy 8:3 Matthew 4:1–11 2 Samuel 21–22; Luke 18:24–43 When our grandson Jay was a child his parents gave him a new T-shirt for his birthday. He put it on right away and proudly wore it all day. When he appeared the next morning in the shirt, his dad asked him, “Jay, does that shirt make you happy?” “Not as much as yesterday,” Jay replied. That’s the problem with material acquisition: Even the good things of life can’t give us the deep, lasting happiness we so strongly desire. Though we may have many possessions, we may still be unhappy. The world offers happiness through material accumulation: new clothes, a new automobile, an update to our phone or watch. But no material acquisition can make us as happy as it did yesterday. That’s becau...

What Does it Mean to Submit to the Church? "If you love someone, set them free." (Sting) Main Question:  What does it mean to submit to a local church? Are their limits to the church's authority over the individual?   Main Answer:  Submitting to the church means submitting our whole selves to the church for its good and for Christ's glory, just as Christ surrendered himself for our good and the Father's glory.  I talk throughout my book about church membership as a kind of submission and the fact that Christianity is congregationally shaped, but what does that look like? Are we really called to surrender our freedom? That's a tough pill to swallow. Didn't Jesus come to set us free, and isn't this what love always does—set the beloved free? It seems that freedom is a prerequisite to love. One person cannot be forced to love another. As the divine Father figure, Papa, in William Young's pop-spirituality novel The Shack, says, "It is ...