Truths to Live By - One Day at a Time

Goodness means excellence of character. Someone has defined it as "virtue equipped at every point," which simply means that the person possessing it is kind, virtuous and righteous in every area of life.

Goodness is the opposite of badness. A bad man may be deceitful, immoral, treacherous, unjust, cruel, selfish, hateful, covetous, and/or intemperate. The good man, though not perfect, exemplifies truth, justice, purity and other similarly desirable traits.

The Apostle Paul...

The King James Version has the word "gentleness" here but almost all modern versions read "kindness." "The fruit of the Spirit is…kindness."

Kindness describes the gentle, gracious, generous disposition that results in the doing of favors, the showing of mercies, and the bestowing of benefits on others. The kind person is gracious, not harsh; sympathetic, not indifferent; and helpful, not uninvolved. He is considerate, compassionate and charitable.

There is a natural kindness...

Longsuffering is the virtue that bears up patiently and even triumphantly under the aggravations of life. While it may refer to a patient response to adverse circumstances, it usually refers to a merciful endurance of the provocations of people.

God is longsuffering with man. Think for a moment of the gross sinfulness of the human race at the present time - the legalization of prostitution, the popularization of homosexuality, the laws permitting abortions, the breakdown of marriage...

As soon as we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). That means that the hostility between ourselves and God has ceased since Christ has effectively dealt with the cause of that hostility - our sins.

We also have peace of conscience knowing that the work is finished, Christ has paid the penalty of our sins, and God has forgotten...

Man never finds real joy till he finds the Lord. Then he enters in to what Peter calls "joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:8).

Anyone can rejoice when circumstances are favorable, but the joy which is the fruit of the Spirit is not the result of earthly circumstances. It springs from our relationship to the Lord and from the precious promises He has given to us. Christ would have to be dethroned before the Church could be finally...

The phrase "the fruit of the Spirit" teaches us at the outset that the virtues that follow can be produced only by the Holy Spirit. An unconverted man is incapable of manifesting any of these graces. Even a true believer is powerless to reproduce them by his own strength. So when we think of these graces, we must remember that they are supernatural and other-worldly.

The love spoken of here, for instance, is not the eros of passion, or the

When Jesus suggested going back to Judea, the disciples were terrified. The Jews had tried to stone Him there only recently, and now He was talking about a return visit. In answer to the disciples' apprehension, Jesus said, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" At first glance, the question seems to be completely disconnected from the conversation. But what the Savior was saying was this! The working day is made up of twelve hours. When a person is yielded to God, every day has its...

One of the great themes of the New Testament is the lordship of Jesus Christ. Over and over we are reminded that He is Lord and that we should give Him that place in our lives.

To crown Jesus as Lord means to surrender our lives to Him. It means to have no will of our own, but to want His will supremely. It means the willingness to go anywhere, do anything, and say whatever He desires. When Joshua asked the captain of the Lord's army, "Are you for us or against us?" the captain...

In all of God's dealings with mankind, there is a curious merging of the divine and the human.

Take the Bible, for example. There is the divine Author, and there are human authors, who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

As far as salvation is concerned, it is of the Lord from start to finish. There is nothing a man can do to earn or deserve it. And yet he must receive it by faith. God clearly elects individuals to salvation, but they must enter in at the strait gate....

If a carpenter can take waste, scrap lumber and make a splendid piece of furniture out of it, it brings more credit to him than if he uses only the finest of materials. So when God uses things that are foolish, worthless and weak to accomplish glorious results, it magnifies His skill and power. People cannot attribute the success to the raw materials; they are forced to confess that it can only be the Lord who deserves the credit.

The book of Judges provides repeated illustrations of...

By these words our Lord indicates that we cannot at the same time seek man's approbation and the approval of God. He also affirms that once we embark on a quest for human accreditation, we have dealt a body-blow to the life of faith.

In similar vein the Apostle Paul expresses the moral inconsistency between coveting man's praise and God's: "…for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10 b).

Let me...

When Jesus asked two blind men if they believed that He was able to give them sight, they replied that they did. As He touched their eyes, He said, "According to your faith be it unto you," and their eyes were opened.

It would be easy to conclude from this that if we just have enough faith, we can get anything we want, whether wealth, healing, or whatever. But that is not the case. Faith must be based upon some word of the Lord, some promise of God, some command of Scripture. Otherwise...

It is a basic fact of physical life that we beget children in our own likeness, after our image. Adam begat a son in his own likeness, and called his name Seth. When people saw Seth they probably said what people have been saying ever since: "Like father, like son."

It is also a sobering fact of spiritual life that we beget children in our own image. When we are used to introduce others to the Lord Jesus, they insensibly take on characteristics similar to our own. Here it is not a...

The essential difference between the wise man and the fool in the book of Proverbs is that the wise man will hear and the fool won't.

It isn't a question of the fool's mental capacity. Actually he may have unusual intellectual ability. But he just cannot be told anything. He labors under the fatal delusion that his knowledge is infinite and his judgments are infallible. If his friends try to counsel him, they receive scorn for their efforts. They watch him trying to escape the...