Author: Dwight Clough

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind … Jeremiah 17:9-10To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul … — Psalm 25:1Here’s the second paradigm shift that changed my life: God likes honesty.Here is something I learned slowly, grudgingly: We lie to ourselves. All of us do. It’s part of the human condition. We don’t like to admit to ourselves where we are really at. Easy example: Ask a teenage boy if he’s scared. Will he admit to it? Probably not. Instead, he…

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. — John 14:3Much of the Christian life is a series of paradigm shifts. God is slowly transforming us so that we can begin to see all of life from His point of view.Here’s the first of seven paradigm shifts that have changed my life: God likes me.All my life, I had been told that God loves me. I figured, hey, does He have any choice? That’s His job. He is love. …

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? — 1 John 3:17God knows that our hearts are smaller than His. He knows that there is only so much room for grief, for empathy, for love. And our money, which is really just an expression of our hearts, is also limited.That’s why God speaks to us. Some of us cry for single moms, others cry for children who are abused, still others cry for the "people of heaven" who live and die in…

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus … who for the joy set before him endured the cross … — Hebrews 12:2… continued from yesterday …Why is it that Richard Wurmbrand’s prison cell would glitter to him like a thousand diamonds? Why would another brother who was tortured with boiling oil see the glory of God? Why was the broken, raspy voice of a fellow prisoner singing the most beautiful song in the world?Isn’t it because in their pain they connected with the One who found joy? Jesus descended into pain, but rose into joy. And so, He holds joy…

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus … who for the joy set before him endured the cross … — Hebrews 12:2Is God happy? At the end of the movie, Schindler’s List, Schindler looks around at his remaining possessions and suddenly realizes what they truly cost in terms of human life. He spent money on a car, for example, and, as a result, that money could not be used to ransom people from the Holocaust.We Christians struggle with the same feelings. No matter how much we give, no matter how much we serve, deeply hurting and desperately needy people remain. …

If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! — Galatians 2:17I wish Christians were always a good advertisement for Christianity, but, as you and I both know, that is not the case. Ghandi was turned away from Christ by a man who was supposed to be an ambassador for Christ, but he was an ambassador for racial prejudice instead. Many evil things have been done in the name of Jesus — I go through a catalog of stories in my mind –…

It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers … — Ephesians 4:11God seems to specialize in using bungling human beings, individually and in groups, to accomplish His great purposes. Stop and think about it. What could be more precious than the little baby Jesus? Priceless is too cheap a word. He should have been surrounded by strong armed angels with great flaming swords at all times. Yet God gave baby Jesus with all his human vulnerability into the hands of a sixteen year old…

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!" … Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said to himself, "My master was too easy on Naaman, this Aramean, by not accepting from him what he brought. As surely as the LORD lives, I will run after him and get something from him." — 2 Kings 5:13,20Here we have two different kinds of servants. The servants of Naaman were…

Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. — Revelation 4:4We don’t know a whole lot about these twenty-four elders. Where did they come from? Are they some form of angels? How did they get here? What is their job? What are they thinking? What do they see? If we could spend a day with one of them, what would we learn?There’s a lot going on that we don’t know anything about. I am roughly a half century old. Most of…

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. — Matthew 5:32 What about the wronged party? Recently we’ve focused on those who commit adultery. But what about those who have been sinned against?Here are two words for those who have been sinned against. The first is comfort. God wants to comfort you. He wants to soothe the deep, deep hurt in your heart. He wants to take the anger, the confusion, the invalidation, the betrayal, the shock and replace…