ChickChat

Where's Your Fear?   We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts (1 Thessalonians 2:4, NIV).   A major snare for many people is their fear of other people. So many people fail to make decisions or take action because they are overly concerned about what family, friends, workmates, or peers might think about them. Essentially, in such moments they are more concerned about what people think than what God thinks.   But we cannot be people-pleasers and God-pleasers at the same time. To live in obedience to God, we’ll have to be okay with disappointing some people and making decisions they don’t understand. Our fear of God must become bigger than our fear of man, and no amount of temporal satisfaction or approval from others is worth compromising the destiny for which we have been created.   Together, let’s determine to please God more than each other or ourselves!  

LIFE IN THE SPIRIT One of the things that God promises us is a new life. That’s a great promise, but what does it actually mean? Well, imagine that you’ve been in jail for the last twenty years. Finally, the day comes for your release. You step outside with fresh clothes into the bright sunlight, and finally, the jailhouse door clangs shut behind you for the last time.   Going from captivity to freedom on the one hand would of course be wonderful, but coming to grips with this new-found freedom would take time.   In this devotional series, we’ve spent time looking at the central problem in our lives: sin. God dealt with sin so decisively on the cross, when Jesus died a brutal death for our sins. That tells you the priority God puts on dealing with this problem!   But stepping into this grace is a bit like stepping out of that jail. We have to come to grips with our new life, and make sure we don’t end up in the prison again. How do we do this?    Well, Jesus didn’