Essential Grace Blog

I heard a sermon recently by Chip Ingram where he was talking about the life of Paul the Apostle. His opening line was ‘the shortest distance between point A and point B is a zigzag.’ This is seems to be a rather unique way of looking at the calculus theory, a way that makes life rather complicated for people like me who love straight and uncomplicated lines. His message was on the life of Paul, who after being given a directive from Christ himself on how he was to live his life; went on to live a very eventful and often dangerous life. Paul may have expected his life to be filled with mission trips to the Gentile lands, sermon writing, planning and carrying out evangelism drives, meeting with new believers over a fellowship picnic, and plenty of other ‘normal’ things that a missionary would expect. However, this beautiful straight line he may have envisioned turned out to resemble a scribbled line connecting to points between his salvation and his death. Many ...

There is a quote by Joyce Meyer that says             "patience is not simply the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting" I have to admit, I am not naturally the most patient person. I know this is true for quite a few people. It can be from the smaller things like driving behind a slow driver, waiting for the toaster to pop. It can also be waiting for that elusive job opening, or for that baby you always wanted to have some day, and some day seems like five years ago. Waiting is hard. It seems to me that this is especially so when what you are waiting for is dear to your heart. I have often had no difficulty waiting for the bigger things like finishing my degree, or moving countries. This is pretty doable in most cases. But the issues begin when I have to wait on people. Waiting on your family members for example. I have had countless agonizing times of waiting for a sister or parent to make a decision that would greatly affect me...