Author: Dwight Clough

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. — John 1:17When I read the first five books of the Bible, I am struck by a couple of things. First, there is great distance between God and His people. Only a very privileged few could come near to worship, and only one spoke to the Lord face to face. Second, the law was designed to cover every contingency. There are laws for every facet of life — from dining to commerce, from warfare to marriage.We needed all of that, of course. We needed to understand…

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known. — John 1:18How do you squeeze the universe small enough so you can hold it in your hand? How do you put all the oceans of the world in a single bottle? If it were left up to us to find God, we would be in big trouble. How could we hope to know anything about Him in a year, in 70 years, in 6,000 years? It would be like counting the fish in the Pacific ocean, one…

The LORD has given him over to the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of the LORD had warned him. — 1 Kings 13:26If you meditate on this chapter, you can probably come up with several reasons why God did what he did, but I’m going to focus on just one of them: God hates second-hand religion.Remember junior high school? Boy likes girl. Boy is too chicken to tell girl. Boy makes discreet inquiries to see if maybe girl likes boy. Pretty soon there are layers and layers of people between boy and girl. That…

The LORD has given him over to the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of the LORD had warned him. — 1 Kings 13:261 Kings 13 is one of the strangest chapters in the whole Bible. I’ve puzzled over it for years, and only recently is it starting to make sense to me.Here’s the story. A man of God confronts a wicked king, delivering his message with a powerful miracle. Under explicit instructions not to eat or drink, the man of God begins his trip home. But an old prophet, apparently jealous for a piece…

I want to wish my wife Happy Anniversary! 29 years. Wow. How did I manage to make such a good choice? Clearly this was the work of God. Every year you become more beautiful to me, daughter of God. You make me so much more than I could ever be alone. You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride.Your beauty … is of great worth in God’s sight. — 1 Peter 3:3,4 NIVI’ve been working on developing my own paraphrase for portions of the New Testament. I don’t know if this will go anywhere or not, but, today, in…

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus … — Ephesians 2:6Discovering our deepest identity is as simple as opening the Bible. Experiencing it, however, requires a miracle from God.The real you – the you conceived by God and redeemed by the blood of Christ – lives all of life from a position of strength. The real you is beyond safe – you’re indestructible, designed to live forever. The powers of darkness move out of the way for the real you. Sin has no appeal to the real you,…

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" — Matthew 7:3Most people underestimate the damage done by the fall. As Kim and I have resolved to be honest with ourselves, with God and with each other about what is really inside, we find layer after layer of damage. Even so, I know that I am still blind to many of my own faults, because I keep on discovering more faults in me that were there all along.Our second identity is the identity we deny,…

"Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. — Matthew 6:1Who are we really? As we search to uncover who we really are, we often start with the identity we give ourselves.This first identity is who we pretend to be – the persona we project that we hope everyone else will buy. The image we try to portray to others usually reflects how we see ourselves and/or how we want others to see us. It controls many of our…

I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it. — Revelation 2:17The movie, The Bourne Identity, opens with a man with gunshot wounds floating on the Mediterranean Sea. The crew of a fishing boat picks him up and nurses him back to health. He regains his strength, but has lost his memory. There are many things he can remember, like how to speak several languages. But he cannot remember who he is.His only possession was a bank account number corresponding to a safety deposit box in a…

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed Him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, and she had spent all she had on doctors, but no one could heal her. She came up behind Him and touched the edge of His cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. "Who touched Me?" Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against You." But Jesus said, "Someone touched Me; I know that power has gone out from Me." Then the woman, seeing that she could…