I will share about Christian books I have read or listened to.
I will be sharing about my life before and after Christ. I will include stories about my pet and other pets I have encountered.
Jesus Challenges Doubt
While the Gospel of Mark’s author is anonymous, early church traditions associate the book with John Mark, “the Evangelist.” In Mark 9, he writes about an emotionally charged scene where a father, surrounded by a crowd, is asking Jesus to help his son who is possessed by an evil spirit.
Jesus’ response? Our verse of the day, verse 23: “‘If I can?’ … Anything is possible if a person believes.” The very next verse contains the father’s response, confessing that he does, in fact, believe, but asks that Jesus would help him overcome his unbelief!
This pair of verses extends a rich invitation to dive deep into the questions: What is belief? Why is it so important to Jesus? What can we do when we both believe and doubt at the same time?
The answers can be found in Jesus’ answer. He confronts our “if” with His “anything.” His ability isn’t in question, our belief is. Do we trust Him? Are we confident in Him?
That’s not to say our emotions dictate our faith. Like the boy’s father, we can confess that we’re experiencing both belief and doubt at the same time, trusting God is able to do “anything” with the faith we do have.
Believing in the One who created us stabilizes us. Jesus prizes our belief because, without it, we can’t know Him; it’s the first necessary thing. It’s what allows everything else to follow, and anything at all to become possible.
How to Live Generously
What’s your most prized possession? It might be the most valuable thing you own, like the house you’ve worked your whole life to afford. But it could also be a photo from a special time you spent with someone you loved. Or it could be a meaningful gift from a friend.
The value we assign to our “things” is tangled up with our emotions. How we choose to use the things we cherish most reveals our true priorities.
Jesus’ death on the cross is one of the greatest examples of God’s generosity. Despite knowing we could never repay Him, God didn’t hesitate to give up his greatest treasure—His only Son—for us. And through that sacrificial act, He demonstrated what generosity looks like: willingly offering up what we have so that someone else can thrive, even if it causes us pain in the process.
You don’t have to just give financially to practice generosity. Living generously simply acknowledges that God is able to do anything He wants through the gifts He ...
