Tag Douglas Jacoby

We started to live together, as a ‘normal’ worldly couple would do if they had a chance and no one to stop them from doing it. We began our relationship like this but because of my spiritual background and the tremendous love and respect I felt for her, I decided that if my love was real, I couldn’t let her finish as the bad weed of the scripture, burning  in the eternal fire . . . (Matthew 13:36-43).” This is part of an email that we recently received as a response to the official International Churches of Christ website at www.icoc.org. It was written by a brother who fell away from the Lord and his church, but who is asking how he could come back and be restored. It makes my day when good news such as this comes across my desk, and it frequently does. Of the people who leave the church, about 10% eventually come back. But why do so many brothers and sisters who embraced God and accepted his grace, get drawn back into the world by Satan? I believe that a large part of the reason is that they stop being thankful for all that God has given them.  Our theme scripture cited above says, “. . . let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably. . . .” I believe that we need to discover the power of thankfulness as God’s people. As I prepared to lead a devotional for a group of men, I looked at many verses in the Bible that talk about giving thanks and being thankful. I learned that being thankful is much, much more than just a nice thing to do. It is a channel through which God works to overcome the power of Satan in our lives.

Glory – God has it and we want it. That sounds like a condemning statement, but it is just a simple truth. Think about it. Certainly God has glory; no person or thing in the whole universe is his equal. And we all want glory. That can either be good or bad depending on why we want it and where we look for it. Jesus intends to bring his children to glory. I want that; don’t you? The problem is we want the result without the process.

Home for the holidays - just close your eyes for a moment and let memories of past Christmas times with family flood in.

As much as I enjoy getting a good night’s sleep, about the only positive thing that comes from it is the energy and alertness to have a productive day after I wake up. While we understand the need to get enough sleep, it is only when we are awake that our goals are accomplished. Spiritually speaking though, sleep is acceptable to God only in physical death; those who have physically died are said to be asleep (1 Corinthians 15:51). Otherwise, one is in a very dangerous spiritual condition if he is described as being asleep (1 Thessalonians 5:6). Jesus’ very sobering call to the entire church in Sardis (Revelation3:2) was to wake up! They had fallen asleep.