As a young kid, I always used to play superheroes. I would get a little blanket, tie it around my neck like a cape, and “fly” across the yard vanquishing any foe that stood in my way. This may seem a bit childish to you, but I’m sure that many of us, deep down inside, would love to have a superpower. We imagine what it would be like to fly, turn invisible, or pick up whole buildings, but then we come back to reality and think how impossible these things are. And they are impossible.
However, most of us don’t realize that God has given each and every one of us an amazing superpower. It is so powerful that it can break down the barriers that Satan and his demons set up in front of you and other people. It melts the ice that holds hearts …
In my walk with God recently, I have been exploring the topic of Fear of Man (which I abbreviate as “FOM”). This sin pattern has and does beset my life. So, I’d like to share with you my thoughts as I explore and fight it.
What It Is
Some of you are familiar with the concept of FOM, but it is nonetheless a slippery sin, requiring a good definition. Unfortunately I do not have a perfect definition of it. Until I understand it better, my working definition is “valuing the opinions of others more than the opinion of God.”
Though this is (I think :)) what FOM is, our culture rarely calls FOM for what it is. We use myriad euphemisms to make ourselves feel better about our sin. We use names such as “shyness,” “self-consciousness,” “ego,” and many others. FOM is anything that makes you look to …
If you’ve been reading ArrowUp for a while now, then you’ve most likely seen my posts on how to study the Bible. The first one, titled “How to Study the Bible - Part One - Individual Book Study“, gives you simple steps for studing individual books of the Bible. The second, “How to Study the Bible - Part Two - Topical Study“, is a thorough description of how to study the Bible topically.
Apart from the articles I’ve written on the subject, there are many, many other websites and resources that you can read and use to learn how to study the Bible on your own. Below, I’ve put together a list of …
As we grow in our Christian walks and delve deep into God’s Word, we are guaranteed to find problems. God’s Word is a perfectly unified body of Truth, but it doesn’t always seem like it to our eyes. There are some difficult issues that are not easily resolved.
I have the privilege of taking a course called Omnibus (published by Veritas Press) as part of my homeschooling curriculum. It is a conglomeration of literature, history, and theology. In it I have run into several perplexing issues in the Bible, such as the morality of revenge. It sometimes seems that God contradicts Himself in His Word, but that cannot be the case. So how do we, as finite human beings, understand the difficult issues? I have a list of 5 steps (we seem to like 5-point lists here, don’t we) that will hopefully serve as useful guidelines.
1. …