I just noticed those two verses have a lot in common: mercy! I guess I always feel in need of God’s grace, and grateful to hear that it is unfailingly present.
If you and I are going to be Overcomers and live courageously in this mess, it’d be helpful to understand some of it. After we see ultimate reality in Revelation 4–5, in Revelation 6 we get more help seeing behind all the mess. We get some good news about how we can endure and stand with confidence in light of all this pain—the pain of others and our pain as well.
When it comes to suffering, we see several things in the Scriptures that form a paradox we should hold in tension as finite, created beings seeking to understand an infinite and eternal God. The first is that God is good (Mark 10:18), all the works of His hands are faithful and just (Psalm 111:7), and there is no darkness in Him at all (1 John 1:5). God is love. It’s not something He has or does; it’s who He is. God doesn’t do evil; He does love.
Have you wondered if the Bible’s genealogies are an important part of Bible study?
Many of us skim through the genealogies, but they are important and play a part in how we can come to understand the cultural nuances around the time of each person’s life in the Bible. That’s why we are introducing All the Genealogies of the Bible to Bible Gateway Plus.
God’s plans for each of us extend back long before we were born, which you can discover by studying the lineage of Biblical heroes. You will discover that God’s love embraces more than we can comprehend, especially if we are focusing only on ourselves in this time and place without the context of God’s Word providing direction in our lives.
People all over the world are under His care and have been since He made Adam. And, if you’ve ever doubted the plans He has for you, let’s look at the story of Ruth.
Anticipation keeps me going. What about you? Do you feel the need to look forward to what’s ahead—a vacation, a weekend at the beach or in the mountains, the birth of a child or grandchild, the diploma that concludes your studies, the day you retire, or even the fresh taste of tomatoes in summer?
Over the past five years, I’ve grappled with three tremendous losses. Because of my wife’s multiple sclerosis, I stepped away from my life’s work of pastoring. That was a greater loss than I realized at the time. Sometime later, Katrina passed away. And then my dream of serving in my own local church of forty years evaporated. I was no longer needed.
Jeremiah recounts more of his own life than any other prophet, telling of his ministry, the reactions of his audiences, testings, and his personal feelings. Jeremiah served as both a priest and a prophet and was the son of a priest named Hilkiah. He was from the small village of Anathoth (1:1), today called Anata, about 3 mi. NE of Jerusalem in Benjamin’s tribal inheritance.
As an object lesson to Judah, Jeremiah remained unmarried (16:1–4). He was assisted in ministry by the scribe Baruch, to whom Jeremiah dictated and who copied and had custody over the writings compiled from the prophet’s messages (36:4,32; 45:1). Jeremiah has been known as “the weeping prophet” (9:1; 13:17; 14:17), living a life of conflict because of his predictions of judgment by the invading Babylonians. He was threatened, tried for his life, put in stocks, forced to flee from Jehoiakim, publicly humiliated by a false prophet, and thrown into a pit.
Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, is pleased to announce the release of the NASB Wide Margin Bible (New American Standard Bible, 1995 Text)—the first of its kind for Zondervan’s NASB line.
“Our mission is to publish beautiful Bibles in translations readers love; we are so happy to bring a wide margin version to faithful readers of the NASB,” said Melinda Bouma, vice president and publisher of Bibles for Zondervan. “By using the margins to deepen their study with notes, reflections and prayers, readers of this Bible will not only deepen their understanding of the Scripture — they’ll also create a beautiful keepsake for their loved ones.”
Do you use Bible Gateway to read the Bible each day? You are not alone!
If you have a free account or are a member of Bible Gateway Plus, you’ll be excited by our newest feature! You can now pin your most frequently used Study Resources to the top of the Resources panel!
To access your Pinned Resources, you’ll find them at the top under “Pinned Resources.”
I hate being lost and losing my way. It leaves me disoriented, and honestly, it can be a really scary feeling to not know where you are. Today, we have modern tools like smartphones that give us maps and directions at our fingertips. But before that technology was available, one of the most vital tools that people used to keep from getting lost was a compass.
A compass shows us which direction we should go and keeps us from going where we should not. God’s Word is a type of compass. It points us to where Jesus is and reveals when we start to falter, or get distracted, or are going in a direction that will take us away from him. Yet a compass is only good if we use it. If we fail to keep our focus on it, we will lose our way.
Let’s look at how the Greek word for humility was used in Paul’s setting. One of the prominent Greek words we translate as “humble” (tapeinophrosynē) could also be translated as “self-abasement” or “lowliness.” In Greek, there are words that are related to each other that convey the concept of humility, and this type of thing is referred to as “word groups.” Markus Barth, a renowned Swiss New Testament scholar that lived during the second half of the 1900s, shared this insight about the humility word group: “The entire word group which belongs with tapeinophrosynē, according to its usage in common Greek, is used in a negative sense and means a low slavish orientation.”[1]
Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, is pleased to announce the release of the Amplified® Journal the Word® Bible. Zondervan published the first Journal the Word Bible in 2016 and is now making it available in the Amplified translation for the first time.
The Bible Gateway Blog features the latest news, announcements, and reflections from Bible Gateway. We hope what you find here will add to your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible.