A lot of stories involve the hero saving the world. But is that realistic if you consider what the hero has been through? What if saving the world means saving the villain? Or that bully who made the hero’s life terrible back in high school? Or the person who lied and it cost the hero his or her job, home, or even their first love?

When I started writing Blood Secrets, it hit me (and therefore Cass as I was writing her story), that if she saved her world—all the people who were forced to live on mountaintops, airships, and sky islands because of the deadly Mist that covered everything else—she would be saving the people who saw her as lesser than. The people who forced everyone else off the mountains to die in the Mist, including her parents. The same people who would never think of saving someone…

Psalm 53 opens with a contrast between foolishness and wisdom.Verse 1 addresses foolishness: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’”Verse 2 addresses wisdom: “God looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.”

According to the psalmist, foolishness is associated with a denial of God and wisdom is associated with seeking God.

St. Augustine and F.F. Bruce offer one reason why it is wise for us to seek God.St. Augustine writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”F.F. Bruce adds, “The soul’s deepest thirst is for God himself, who has made us so that we can never be satisfied without him.”It is wise for us to seek God because closeness with God is what our hearts most deeply long for, leaving us perennially dissatisfied until we find…

Little Benjamin sat down to write a letter to God, asking for a bicycle. He started out, “Dear God, I’ve been a very good boy….” He stopped, thought about it, and said to himself, “No, God won’t believe that.” He wadded up the paper, threw it away, and started again: “Dear God, most of the time I’ve been a good boy….” He stopped again, thinking to himself, “This won’t work very well with God.” Into the trash can went the second piece of paper. Benjamin sat there thinking for a minute, then he got up, went into the bathroom, grabbed a big towel, brought it into the living room and laid it neatly on the couch. Then he went to the fireplace mantle, reached up, and took down the familiar family statue of the Madonna. Benjamin placed the statue in the middle of the towel, gently folded over the edges…

From the very first chapter of the Bible, the message presented to us is that we were made in the likeness of God. To put it another way, what makes God tick also makes us tick.

What makes God tick is love—the continual and outflowing abundance of love! Therefore, we need to recognize that what truly makes us tick is nothing less than the generous outflowing of love. We find our deepest fulfillment in life when love is flowing generously out of us.

This is why Scripture frequently describes our giving (our financial stewardship) as a gift and as a joy rather than as a burden or a chore. We get the opportunity to give and to find joy and fulfillment in the giving.

In the closing paragraphs of his letter to the Christians in Philippi, Paul addresses the subject of financial stewardship.

In Philippians 4:17, he writes, “Not that…

Do worries ever keep you awake at night?

Do you ever find yourself feeling afraid about what the future might hold?

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by pressures weighing down on you?

Do you ever try to escape from the pressures in your life through alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, pornography or television?

Do you find yourself feeling cynical or depressed about life?

Do you find yourself acting irritably toward others?

Do you struggle with high blood pressure, ulcers or chronic illness?

Unaddressed or mishandled anxiety causes severe damage to our soul and to our health. In the book Anxiety, Disorders and Phobias, Dr. Aaron Beck points out, “Worrying is costly. It can lead to health problems, impaired concentration, and much wasted time.” Charles Swindoll puts it more harshly: “I have never seen a gravestone that reads, ‘He died of worry.’ But some of them ought to read that way.”…