Bible Gateway Blog

This is the one-hundred-thirty-first lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” Exodus 3:4

There are two kinds of fire you can have in your house. One is a monster that will move from room to room—leaping, growing, devouring. The other resides in your fireplace. It is controlled, friendly, and inviting. It draws you in. It brings people together. It warms you but does not burn you.

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This is the one-hundred-thirtieth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. Genesis 45:7-8

One of the most discouraging things we experience is when life takes a very bad turn, and we wonder how God could possibly redeem the situation. It could be an untimely death, the loss of a job, the betrayal of a friend. Any experience which seems to violate the essence of what’s good and right.

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This is the one-hundred-twenty-ninth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

An older man walks haltingly through the cemetery at Normandy on the north coast of France. He passes through the sea of clean white crosses and stars of David marking the resting places of hundreds of young men whose lives were cut off on D-Day; they died decades earlier so that multitudes could go on living in peaceable societies as parents and teachers and engineers and neighbors. He drops to his knees in front of the marker of someone who saved his life, is thrust into a moment of self-examination, and struggles to get out a plea to his wife who is standing at his side:

“Tell me I’ve lived a good life…. Tell me I’m a good man.”

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