Yesterday I was reminded again of the great and socially encouraged sin of the church – gossip.

I have never added a motive onto my definition of gossip; that I leave for slander or defamation. Loose tongues speaking negatively or suggestively about someone who is not present is gossip.

“If a person thinks that he is religious but can’t control his tongue, he is fooling himself. That person’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26 God’s Word).

James 3:5-10 goes to great length to describe the horror of a loose tongue and gossip: Read more…

[Sometimes the old artists cannot be improved upon. May you be blessed by this devotional as I was.]

November 21
Morning Verse
“Don’t give God’s Holy Spirit any reason to be upset with you.” Ephesians 4:30 (God’s Word) Read more…

Remember, Saul, who later changed his name to Paul to indicate his changed life, persecuted the followers of Jesus. Something that gets glossed over all the time is that he did so under the watchful eye of the religious institution. Even more, the religious leaders wrote a letter of authority so that Saul could go to other countries to persecute believers.

Saul even authorized, on at least one occasion, the murder of a believer (Stephen). Stephen’s crime was, well, that he didn’t believe the right thing. Stephen was not convicted of a criminal offense, a social abuse or failure to live up to his potential. The only “crime” Saul accused him of was believing in Jesus Christ as Saviour. Read more…

It doesn’t matter how many times I read it, or in how many places in the Bible (and there are a lot), I am flabbergasted at the reaction of the religious elite to Good News. Here’s another case in point: Read more…

Science takes the big picture and reduces it into a single factor to test it out. Since none of us live one factor at a time scientific research can sometimes sound ridiculous. Read more…