I have to confess I hate waiting in line at stores or restaurants, especially at the checkout line to pay the bill. The other day I was at the checkout line at Cracker Barrel and a lady before me was paying for her meal and buying some gift items. The checker was messing up her bill and had to ring her bill up several times with multiple tickets – O brother! I have just started walking with my special boot since my left foot Achilles surgery and I gave the bill to my wife and walked outside to sit down because I can’t stand long in one place.

In the first article on Mustard Seed Faith I unpacked how the idea of the Mustard Seed was taught by Jesus as presented in the book of Matthew. There were three passages were Matthew let us know the context of how Jesus taught this topic and it had nothing to do with how most Christians view its focus.

I have heard a good many sermons on “The Mustard Seed,” but always it has revolved around the idea of us gaining stronger faith for different things in our lives, from the need and desire for healing, to financial provision, to preaching the gospel. But what if there was more to the whole “Mustard Seed” idea that was meant to bring us into a new dimension in the spirit?

I wrote a previous article about what drives us in life in our decision making.  In the first article, I discussed that discovering what drives our choices is crucial and certainly worth our effort to better understand the causes and misconceptions about what drives us. My hope is to help us all evaluate what motivates us to make the best decisions and thus discover ways to fulfill God’s calling in our lives.

There is a lot of scripture that believers just pass over as poetic and sounding nice, yet God spoke these words for us to incorporate into our daily lives. One such passage is in John’s gospel were Jesus said he is the bread of life. So many in the body of Christ have taught that this is some metaphysical concept that human reasoning cannot explain or engage with so it becomes poetic theology.

Ever heard the phrase, “That Drives Me Crazy“? It often comes out when someone is frustrated with someone else. What drives our choices is crucial to understanding why we do what we do and why God has to eventually bring consequences for choices made, whether for good or bad actions. This article may be a little deep for some but it’s important to see why humanity has gone so off the rails in their behavior and purpose in life. The next generation depends on us helping them to see why things went wrong and how to correct our corruption as a people.

Many professing Christians say they believe that scripture is the word of God and yet somehow they “Cherry-Pick” the scriptures they like and avoid the parts they don’t like. This attitude of rejecting certain scriptures and embracing others ends up twisting our concepts about God and ourselves and can make our Christian faith either powerless or, at the worst, a counterfeit faith.

We have all heard the saying, “Confession Is Good For the Soul,” which is more true than we realize. There are a lot of things we say we believe in but I wonder if we fully believe or just kind of believe?  The idea of confession may sound like a biblical idea, yet I think few really practice it much. Believers confess a lot of things but often don’t produce fruit to back those ideas up. Maybe we just “Dabble” with confession. In other words, we confess things either when we are backed into a corner or we get caught doing something we know is wrong. I have to wonder how much faith we have in actually practicing confession.

Warranties are so important for things like cars and houses. Even medical policies we call insurance are a must because most of us couldn’t afford the out of pocket expenses if things go wrong or they break. Imagine people’s surprise when they get a repair bill for their car or a hospital bill and discover the policy they purchased in good faith doesn’t covering their problem. This happens either the policy was misrepresented by the sales person or we failed to read the fine print before purchasing. The same can happen with our expectation of what salvation is all about. We can be told one thing by pastors and teachers in the body of Christ only to discover when we die that we were told the wrong thing and we are not welcomed into God’s embrace.

All of us go through times that test our confidence, our faith and even our sanity. What’s important during these turbulent times is whether or not we seek God’s wisdom and guidance to get us through such times or just try to muscle it on our own.