Matthew 5:22  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, "You fool!" will be liable to the hell of fire.

A pastor asked his 8th grade confirmation students if they thought they could keep the Ten Commandments. One brave girl replied, "I'm pretty sure I've broken all of them, except number five. I've never killed anyone."
 

The pastor didn't want to burst her bubble, but he was compelled by Scripture to explain that "murder" doesn't only mean the physical act of ending someone else's life. He shared Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus redefines murder to include anything that could lead to bodily harm or injury. A lively discussion followed as the class named all the ways we "murder" people today - gossip, lying about people so others will be mad at them, getting in fights. Ideas flowed.

God knows very personally what murder is like - both in its broad definition, when Jesus was lied about and crowds were stirred up against Him, and in its literal sense, when He was kille to pay for sins that He did not commit. Our good and gracious Lord wants to protect all of us from experiencing murders in all its forms.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Ephesians 6:1,4 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.....Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Honoring one's parents and all those in authority over us is meant to help us imitate the honor and love we have for God Almighty. As we recognize all that God gives us in our lives, we praise, thank, serve, and obey Him. We do this as we recognize how much we have through Him.
 

We then have the opportunity to praise, thank, and lovingly serve and obey those He has given to help us live well in life. The world, Satan, and death work desperately to influence us to dishonor God through sin and selfishness. They work to influence us to dishonor our parents, our family members, and all those around us. They want us to believe that the best honor is to honor ourselves over all else. And that leads to guilt and condemnation before God.

So we ask God to forgive us because of Jesus' honorable gift of His life, death, and resurrection. We ask Him to empower us to respect and love those He has called to help us live faithful lives. While being family may be tough in this day and age, it is not impossible with the God of love leading us in our day-to-day living.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Psalm 50:14-15  Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.

It is a little surprising that the Creator of the cosmos has a name. After all, before creation, God was alone. He had no one to talk to. Yet He does have a name - many names, in fact - I Am; Yahweh; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Lord. We know these names only because He has revealed them to us. This means He is not a farr-off, uncaring God. Rather, He wants us to talk to Him. He wants us to thank Him for all He has given us, and He wants us to call on Him in times of trouble because He loves us and will take care of us.

How shameful it is, then, when we use His name to wish evil on others or lead them astray. And how ungrateful we are when we do not thank Him for His gifts or call on Him when we need help. To know His name and His goodness without talking to Him is just as sinful as using His name to curse or deceive. Let us give thanks, then, that He has revealed to us the only name under heaven by which one may be saved: the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is never too late to ask Jesus for help and forgiveness, and "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Joel 2:32). That is what faith does: it calls to the Lord for help in the day of trouble.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Bill loves bow hunting. He loves it so much that he began setting boundaries for himself on how much time he spent in the woods, lest his marriage take a deer season size hit. His wife loves reading. She loves it so much that her children have to pass a hand in between her face and the book in order to get her attention. Some people love making their homes beautiful; some people love work; some people love their ideas or their minds. Luther tells us that our hearts are inclined to one interest or another. We are all leaning into something, making something the most important part of the day, that season, or this life. We can also do this with important relationships: loving our children, our spouse, or our friends so much that it crowds out the space intended for God.

Picture inclination not just as letters on a paper but as an action of the whole body. Whatever it is, we love it so much that we lean toward it rather than toward God. We rest our head on its chest; we snuggle to it so close that we can hear its heartbeat. This type of relationship is reserved only for God. We are invited to incline to Him, to lean into His heart and into His Word, and He overflows what we need for all the rest - time, energy, love, attention, and resources. Our inclination is intended only for One - the One who sacrificed everything, leaning into our world, to save us.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Some people refuse to darken the doctor's door. "I'll be fine," they say. They're not wrong to be afraid. Crossing that threshold has consequences. No more autonomy. Inspection. Diagnosis.

The Ten Commandments are the doorway. God, the Creator, stands just inside. His design and desire are simple: faith toward Him and love toward others.

You're on the examination table now. The Physician takes a good look. Your defiant disobedience has distorted His design and desire. You're not just sick; you're dying. No, worse! You've suffocated under your own self-obsession.

There is another who calls Himself the door, God's Word made flesh, the obedient Son of the Creator, Jesus. He fulfilled His Father's demands: perfect faith and perfect love. He took your sickness and died your death. Then He burst the door of the tomb and left all your disobedience buried forever. He exited there in order to encounter your dead soul by His Holy Spirit. His Spirit now breathes new life into your dry bones in conformity to Himself (Galataians 4:19).
 

You very well may fear this Great Physician. But He teaches you to love and trust Him. He, and He alone, is your God.

There is one more doorway, though. Jesus stands behind it. The Law still stands as well. But you have already died and are "hidden with Christ" (Colossians 3:3). On the day you cross that threshold, :He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion" (Philippians 1:6), and you will see Him face-to-face.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

The moonflower is a flower that only blooms at night under the light of the moon. I began thinking about the way some of our gravest and most fearful moments hit us at night. How many times do we wake in the night in a panic, worried about an approaching deadline or an unresolved issue? When that nighttime terror comes again, think of the moonflower. Like the moonflower blooming, Christ comes to us at night with the comfort of his Word: "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

Like the potentially romantic moonflower, our heavenly Father comes to us in love: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you" (Jeremiah 31:3). The moonflower stays open until sunrise, just as the Holy Spirit stays with us until Jesus returns on the Last Day to take us to himself forever. Like the fragrant moonflower, what sweet joy our triune God offers us, day and night, as he carries us through life into eternity.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Recalculating. If you have ever used a GPS you probably have experienced that word at one time or another and go a different way than the app has mapped out. Though we have gone "off-course," our GPS finds a new way to get us back on track.

The idea of recalculating recalls for me the work of our Good Shepherd in our lives. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6) When we have gone our own way, our Good Shepherd comes and finds us. Our Good Shepherd tells us, "What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray" (Matthew 18:11-13). Jesus is our divine GPS. He did the recalculating for us by going to the cross to save us from our sins and put us on the path to everlasting life.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,