Who can keep up a façade for a lifetime?

(Heb. 13:17)

Eve was drawn by the Serpent into evil through a focus on her own sensations, desires, and self-perceptions

Stories like Nayana’s must have been common in the early church. In the book of Acts, which tells about the founding of the church, starting in Jerusalem and moving outward, Luke describes an increasingly diverse community that included people from various countries, speaking different languages but drawn together by their common faith in Jesus

These vivid pictures communicate the wonder of the way God speaks to us from heaven, sending his own word from outside us, in order to give us life we do not have within ourselves.

The call not to neglect our inner experience is a valid one, but everything turns on the question of whose voice is directing us, whether it be our own or the voices around us or the voice of God given to us in his Word.

The coffee shop is a snapshot of Dubai—many nations living in the same place yet isolated from one another.

Japanese have coffee with Persians. Filipinos show hospitality to Indians. Ghanaians pray with Americans. Bible studies are comprised of mixed groups of people from every habitable continent. My own small group has women from Nigeria, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, Australia, Eritrea, Ireland, England, Germany, and the US.

Above all, we must be prayerful, waiting upon the Lord to make the way clear.