Category: Memory Verse

“What an unbelieving lot you are!” –Mark 9:19 Sometimes the Lord does things in our lives whether or not we have faith. Often, however, the Lord wants us to make a free decision to accept His grace. We express our freedom by faith. For example, Jesus told the father of a demon-possessed son: “Everything is possible for anyone who has faith” (Mk 9:23, JB). The father realized that Jesus was calling him to have faith. So he exclaimed: “I do have faith! Help the little faith I have!” (Mk 9:24, JB) In that situation, Jesus called not only the father...

“Abishai whispered to David: ‘God has delivered your enemy into your grasp this day. Let me nail him to the ground with one thrust of the spear.’ ” –1 Samuel 26:8 Abishai gave David the traditional “wisdom of war,” that is: “Kill, nail, and spear the enemies before they do it to you first.” In other words, “do unto others before they do unto you.” David surprisingly rejected Abishai’s standard advice (1 Sm 26:9). In this he prefigured Jesus, the Son of David. Jesus didn’t just talk about having mercy on our enemies. He paid the price for mercy by...

“He was transfigured before their eyes and His clothes became dazzlingly white.” –Mark 9:2-3 On Transfiguration mountain, Peter, James, and John saw Jesus’ glorified body. They also saw how their own bodies would look in Heaven. “He will give a new form to this lowly body of ours and remake it according to the pattern of His glorified body” (Phil 3:21). Imagine Jesus’ transfigured body as the pattern according to which our lowly bodies will be remade. God began renovating our bodies when He bought them at the price of His blood (1 Cor 6:20). Yet even though He owns...

“I for My part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build My Church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” –Matthew 16:18-19 The Lord wants us to be one as He and the Father are one (Jn 17:21). “It was in one Spirit” that we “were baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). The source, center, and culmination of our faith is receiving and being in unity, union, and Communion with the Lord and each other. The Lord has...

“Do not even go into the village.” –Mark 8:26 The village in today’s passage was Bethsaida, a place Jesus elsewhere condemned for its advanced hardened and unrepentant attitude (see Mt 11:21-24). This is the only incident in the Gospels in which Jesus had to heal a person in two stages. Possibly the extreme hardness of the village made it more difficult for a healing to take permanent root. First, Jesus “led [the blind man] outside the village” (Mk 8:23). Healing often occurs best away from the skeptical crowd, by either getting away from the crowd or putting the crowd out...