Do you respond to God’s generosity and the needs of others with greed? Has your attempt at self-restoration been about what you can gain, or has it been about protecting what you are afraid to lose? Have you tried to be restored, but your self-ambition has pulled you away from living generously? If you answer […]

We must beware of discriminating against the rich in order to help the poor (Exodus 23:3). This is posturing greed. Posturing greed is pretense: helping the poor with a disguised internal jealousy against the rich. We attempt to pursue social justice apart from the loving heart of God. Too often, our hearts for social justice […]

Do you ever show favoritism? Favoritism is giving the gift to ourselves and misses out on intimacy with God (James 2:8-9). It flows from a partially surrendered heart. We show favoritism to those we coach, lead, manage, or serve. We might do so out of fear of losing something or hope in gaining something. However, […]

Is there any area in your life where you are pretending? Attempting to satisfy our desires apart from God creates the gap of pretense in each one of us. Like a spine that is out of alignment, this gap misaligns our hearts, desires, and three resources of life (time, talent, and treasure), from the outside […]

Peter taught: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10). We were designed to be generous with our gifts of time, talent, and treasure. We were designed to use our gifts received vertically to serve those horizontally, so that they […]

We all do it. A non-profit corporation CEO offers a favor to a potential donor whom he will ask later for a charitable contribution that will advance his agenda for the organization. He gave the gift to himself. A busy husband reluctantly adheres to his wife’s request to pick up the kids from school only […]

An entrepreneur owned a start-up social networking business. He strategically placed his office in the center of his one hundred employees who could observe his work ethic through the glass panes surrounding his command central. The ecommerce strategy that he was actualising was palpable. One day, an intern who made wine in her spare time […]

Our goodness can be just as much of a barrier to God as our badness because we often trust in it. Jesus told a parable that became known as “The Prodigal Son.” However, Jesus never titled it by that name. Instead, He described two sons, with the climax of the story focusing on the elder […]

What would happen if you surrendered your desires vertically to the Restorer and became significant in the grace of God, content in the peace of God, under control in the power of God, and secure in the truth of God? If you trusted in godliness rather than your giftedness, would you transfer the satisfaction of […]