Francois Mitterrand, the late president of France, was an intellectual and an atheist.  Yet in the latter years of his life, he had a fascination with death and a desire to know what lies beyond the grave--something which challenged the atheism which he held to, at least philosophically.  Possessed by a strange fascination with death, he visited the graves of many of France's leading citizens pondering how they lived and how they died.  He once said that "he who loves death loves life."

Guidelines For Living Devotional

Are You Tempted to Believe In God?

Richard Versalle was portraying the minor role of a law clerk named Vitek in a performance at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York City.  He was age 63 and had suffered absolutely no adverse health problems. In the opera there is a beautiful and mysterious woman who wants to live forever. Her father, a chemist-magician, concocts a powerful elixir which allows her to live more than 300 years.  But Versalle, portraying the law clerk, sings a line which goes, "You can only live so long."  Little did anyone who attended the opera that night realize that those words— "You can only live so long" --would be the last sentence ever to come from the lips of this man whose singing had touched the hearts of thousand and thousands in his career.

Learn How To Face Death

"Maturity," says the Merriam‑Webster dictionary, "is the condition, or state, of being fully developed."  However, the word is often used so loosely that it flaps like a kid's shirttail in the breeze.  Michael Drury says, "If you are mature, you are presumed to be happy, secure, married, well‑liked and something called "adjusted."  If you aren't mature, you are incorrigible, defective or warped—and heaven help you."

What Does It Mean To Be Mature?

The French writer, Guy de Maupassant, was one of the world's greatest writers of short stories.  At the same time, he was one of the world's most sad and tragic figures.  As a celebrity and writer, he had it all, yet in reality, what he had didn't satisfy.  Within a decade, he rose from obscurity to fame as his stories were published in newspapers and journals around the world.  His name became a household word.  With fame came the trappings of success:  a yacht in the Mediterranean, a large house on the Norman Coast, and his luxurious flat in Paris.  One biographer put it, "Critics praised him; men admired him; and women worshiped him."

Start Learning What Life Is All About

"Do I have to believe in Jesus to be a Christian?" asked a young man whose Russian Jewish background had never exposed him to the Gospel.  Having been raised in a home in the former Soviet Union where God was seldom if ever discussed, he had heard about Jesus but didn't really know how He would fit into Christianity.  He wanted to know. How would you answer that question?  There are millions of people whose backgrounds are nominally Christian who still don't understand the relationship between Jesus Christ and Christianity.

What Does Jesus Have To Do With Christianity?

"To deny sin is bad news, indeed," wrote John Alexander.  Continuing, he said, "The only good news is sin itself. Sin is the best news there is, the best news that there could be in our predicament.  Because with sin, there's a way out. There's the possibility of repentance. You can't repent of confusion or psychological flaws inflicted by your parents—you're stuck with them. But you can repent of sin. Sin and repentance are the only grounds for hope and joy, the grounds for reconciled, joyful relationships."[i]     [i] John Alexander in The Other Side, as quoted by Christianity Today, February 9, 1998.

Five Elements of Repentance

 "If our greatest need had been information," read a Christmas card I received, "God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need was for forgiveness, so God sent us a Savior." 

Discover The Link Between Sin And A Savior

There is a three-letter word that spells the difference between happiness and misery, between freedom and bondage, and between heaven and hell.  A generation or two ago, this word was commonly used in our speech, especially by the clergy.  We used this word to describe wrongdoing and human failure. Then, as some words are prone to do, it gradually began to be replaced by synonyms which were more gentle and kind.  That old three-letter word is sin, and in spite of the fact that most people prefer not to think of themselves as being tainted by this word, sin is good news!  "And how can that be?" you might be thinking.  It's simple: There is a solution to the problem of sin, an antidote which neutralizes its effect; and that is good news.

This Is The Good News About Sin

It happened frequently. The door of my office would be closed, and I'm would be quietly working or engaged in conversation with someone when suddenly the door would open, and a lean, dignified, rather tall American of German descent—then in his 90's— would come marching in, having done an "end run" around the receptionist and my assistant, much as a defensive tackle would do in breaking through the line of scrimmage in a football game. In his hand would be a magazine article or something encouraging which he wanted me to have. He stayed for only a few brief moments. Then he was gone, often reminding me of Elijah who appeared unannounced in the court of King Ahab.

How Prayer Changed Armin Gesswein

Question:  What drives your life?  "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go," says the message on a car bumper sticker.  But is debt really the drive shaft of your existence?  What are the ingredients of a life worth living?  I'm not a philosopher, but when you live long enough and analyze the mistakes of people you form some opinions.  You see some live into their 90s who are bright and cheerful, and you see others, a third their age, grow bitter and cynical and begin to wither and die.  We don't always bury them, but their brains are short-circuited.  They are the living dead who exist but are living for nothing.   Theirs is the despair which Solomon talked about when he said, "I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living who are still alive" (Ecclesiastes 4:2).

What Does It Mean To Be God's Child?

"Happy?  Grouchy?  Could Be Your Genes," says the topic of a article featuring the research of psychologists at the University of Illinois.  Said Daniel Goldman, formerly from the New York Times, "Studies of happiness in several countries have found that money makes little difference to perceptions of happiness, except among the very poor.  Nor do education, marriage and a family, or any of the many other variables that researchers have sought to correlate with contentment.  Each facilitator may make a person a little happier, but it has a minor impact, compared with the individual's characteristic sense of well-being." 

This Is Why Happiness Matters

How do you find God?  Now, here's a second question.  If you have a child who gets lost, what do you do?  You look for that child.  Right?  Neighbors and friends mobilize until that child is found.  But are the two issues of finding God and finding a lost child the same?

4 Steps to Finding God

"I don't need God; I can handle things myself!"  Occasionally I am confronted with those words.  "Really?" I often say, giving me a moment to think before I respond.  Though I've never actually said it, "I've often wanted to respond: "You are a most unusual individual.  In fact, you are so rare a specimen that you should be the subject of study by the scientists of our day, and certainly, the theologians, who need to know how someone can be so secure, so confident of himself or herself, so absolute.  They need to know what makes you different from all the other creatures which fill the churches of the world, who pray to the Almighty, who christen babies and bury their dead with the hope of eternity."

Why Do I Need God?

It was one of those strange coincidences of life which took place near the old River Kwai in Thailand.  At this site during World War 2, the Japanese occupation army used slave labor to build a Thai-Burmese jungle railway.  Executions, starvation, cruelty, and tropical diseases resulting from a lack of sanitation and health care took the lives of more than 100,000 people--mostly Asians along with Americans, Australians, Dutch, and some 16,000 British soldiers.

Start Letting Go Of Your Bitterness

About the age of 12, I discovered the author, Zane Gray, whose western books covered several feet of shelf space in the library near my home.  Long before Louis Lamour captured the hearts of western-lovers, Zane Gray was thrilling people with sagas such as The Riders of the Purple Sage and Thirty Thousand on Hoof.  Gray was an author who had a pretty good grasp of human nature and wrote about that age-old battle of good and evil.  The plots were all rather predictable--heroes and villains and a pretty girl who eventually was rescued by the handsome young hero who captured her heart before riding off into the western sunset.

How To Trust In God's Plan For Your Future

A 5-minute daily devotional to help you fully live the life God has designed for you.

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Guidelines For Living Devotional

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