Passage, Paragraph, and Prayer

If peers who are younger than you or who aren’t your friends oppose you for your faith, you probably won’t think anything of it. But when about when those with influence and power do so?

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God doesn’t just model fatherhood in his creating and protecting us. He also models fatherhood in the way he continues to uphold his created order in confronting Adam and Eve after they have fallen i…

Guarding God’s testimonies doesn’t tend to earn respect in a fallen world. Quite the opposite. So what do we do with that burden of reproach and contempt from others?

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Ba…

God had only done tremendous good for Adam and Eve before they ate the forbidden fruit, so why do they attempt to hide from him among the trees? In Genesis 3:8 we see another wretched side effect of …

We tend to romanticize insolence and rebellion and make it attractive, but God rebukes such people as cursed.

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenburg Concerto, No. 1, Movement 4

The devil promised a kind of enlightenment, and in sinning, Adam and Eve’s were opened in a sense—to a firsthand knowledge of evil that only filled them with shame and guilt. On the whole, though, si…

The concept of having a crush is as old as the psalms, except the object of the psalmist’s crush is not a person of the opposite sex. He seeks to cultivate in us a crush on God’s decrees.

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Moses, the author of Genesis, tells us that Adam was with Eve the entire time she was being tempted. Yet he said and did nothing. That means that he was just as involved in the fall into sin as his w…

How much more wisely would we all live our lives if we remembered and realized that earth is no one’s true home?

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenburg Concerto, No. 1, Movement 4

Usually we assume that the only way we can know the truth is if we perceive if with our own sense. (Think of the saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”) But what the Fall into Sin makes clear is th…

Gregory the Great once said that Scripture is a stream an elephant can swim in and a lamb can wade across. In other words, a child can grasp and express its message with little effort, but it also ha…

This is the first of a three-week series on the first in Scripture that describes humanity’s fall into sin. Genesis 3:6 is one of the saddest verse, if not the saddest verse, in the Scriptures.

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In mainstream American Christianity, obedience to God is often presented as our free choice. But in this verse the psalmist makes clear that God must act before we can act in a godly way. He must giv…

The devil mixes some truth with his lies, even his bold-faced lies, and thereby he makes them sound rational.

Music Credit: J. S. Bach, “Wir eilen mit schwachen, doch emsigen Schritten,” aria from “Je…

Did you know that God himself encourages us to make games out of his Word, especially for children and young people?

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenburg Concerto, No. 1, Movemen…

When we stand our ground against Satan’s initial temptations, he eventually shows his true colors—calling God a liar, and in so doing, revealing himself as the ultimate liar. He takes what God says i…

Does worship ever get ruined for you because of what someone else is doing? The psalmist has something to say to us about our focus and attention in Psalm 119:15.

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, …

Sometimes Eve gets a bad rap for engaging with the serpent or for saying that they are not allowed to touch the fruit. In reality, Eve did a good job responding to the devil…at first.

Music Credit: J.…

How does wealth, yes, all the wealth of the earth, compare to God’s testimonies?

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenburg Concerto, No. 1, Movement 4

We already considered how the devil questions the goodness and wisdom of God’s word. But the first temptation also shows us how the devil twists God’s word, in order to portray it, and God, in the wo…