Heather McSwain

[Heather McSwain @Hmcs89]

@victoriousellie Genesis 9:9-10 says God made a covenant with men and living creatures. I think if he included living creatures in the covenant that shows how much he loves them and he has a good plan for them too.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

It is strange how easily men will surrender comfort, sleep, money, friendships, and even family time to chase earthly dreams, yet hesitate when Christ calls them to deny themselves for the gospel.

For success, people will sacrifice almost anything. For ambition, they will endure pain, rejection, discipline, and long seasons of labour. But when the call is to follow Christ, bear the cross, speak the truth, serve the church, and lose reputation for His name, suddenly the cost feels too much.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).

This exposes the heart. We are often more willing to suffer for what will perish than for what will last forever. We treat earthly goals as worth the cost, while acting as though the gospel must never disturb our comfort.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel���s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Christ did not call us to a life where He receives the leftovers after our dreams have taken the best of us. He is not an addition to our plans. He is Lord over the whole life.

Paul saw this clearly. Everything that once gave him status became loss compared to Christ. “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

So let us be honest. The issue is not that the gospel asks too much. The issue is that we often value too little. We will spend ourselves for fading crowns, but drag our feet when eternal glory is before us.

Seek first the kingdom. Everything else is passing.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Sometimes the fiercest resistance to the gospel does not come from the open unbeliever, but from the religious man who thinks he already has Christ while refusing the truth of Christ.

To preach Christ crucified in a pagan world is hard. But to preach the true gospel in a professing Christian world that has grown comfortable with false gospels, shallow grace, man centred religion, emotional experiences, and powerless morality is a different kind of warfare.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine” (2 Timothy 4:3).

The lost man may know he is outside. The religious man often thinks he is safe while sitting under lies. That is why false Christianity is so dangerous. It uses Bible words, speaks about Jesus, sings worship songs, and still hides the sinner from the holiness of God, the guilt of sin, the necessity of repentance, and the finished work of Christ.

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).

This is why the true gospel will always offend religious pride. It strips man of boasting. It gives no room for self righteousness. It tells the moral man he is still guilty, the emotional man he still needs truth, and the churchgoer that nearness to religious activity is not the same as being in Christ.

“They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him” (Titus 1:16).

So yes, there is deep warfare in preaching the gospel inside the visible church today. Not because the gospel is unclear, but because many have learned to protect their idols with Christian language.

The hardest ground is often not the street outside the church. It is the heart inside the pew that has heard enough truth to become familiar with it, but not broken by it.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

We live far too casually for people who must one day stand before God.

Every thought, every word, every hidden motive, every careless act, and every secret desire is seen by Him. Nothing disappears because people forget it. Nothing becomes harmless because we dismissed it. Nothing becomes small because the world laughed at it.

“For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

This is why Scripture speaks so seriously about the tongue, the heart, and the life. We often judge only what is visible, but God weighs what is hidden. Men may hear our words, but God knows the spirit behind them. Men may see our actions, but God sees the heart that produced them.

“But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36).

The Christian does not live under condemnation, because Christ has borne our judgment. But that does not make life careless. Grace does not make obedience light. Mercy does not make holiness optional.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

So let us stop treating life as though it has no eternal weight. What we think matters. What we say matters. What we do matters. And the wise soul lives before God now, knowing that everything will one day stand in His light.

[Tammy, follower of Jesus Christ @TammyDoodleDo]

Wow. That’s powerfully true.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

True happiness consists only in the enjoyment of God.

Man was not made to find his deepest joy in created things. Comfort, success, human love, money, beauty, health, ministry, and earthly blessings may all have their place, but none of them can satisfy the soul that was made for God.

“In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11).

This is why the world is restless. It keeps drinking from broken cisterns and wondering why the thirst remains. Sin promises pleasure, but it cannot give peace. The creature cannot carry the weight that belongs only to the Creator.

“My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

The soul finds its true happiness only when it rests in God, rejoices in God, worships God, and knows God through Jesus Christ. He is not merely the giver of joy. He is our joy.

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25).

Everything else fades. God alone satisfies.

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

Tribulation produces perseverance, which develops experience, which ultimately cultivates hope—and this hope will not disappoint you because God’s love has been poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:3–5).

If I’m honest I’m not feeling overly “hopeful” today. But I thought I’d share a few thoughts from my reading of Romans 5 this morning.

Paul here illustrates hope’s practical power: it emerges through hardship rather than despite it. Hope realigns your perspective so that temporary difficulties become manageable; problems ultimately pass away. When you’re facing difficulty, this reorientation prevents despair from becoming permanent.

Practically, hope motivates righteous action when your flesh grows weary; Paul urged believers not to lose heart in doing good, and hope should fix your eyes on Jesus so you walk in purity as he did. Rather than waiting passively, you actively pursue integrity because you’re anchored to something greater than present circumstances.
Hope then provides something superior to desire, when the world’s temptations appear attractive, hope redirects your longing toward God’s presence, where alone you’ll find the fullness of joy you truly crave.

And this is me speaking to myself — Wes, to put this hope into practice: cultivate Christ-like characteristics and show diligence in service. Hope isn’t passive sentiment but an active anchor that steadies you through life’s storms when you deliberately cling to it.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

The sign that the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in us is not the absence of a battle with sin, but the presence of a real battle against sin.

A dead soul does not fight sin. It loves sin, excuses sin, protects sin, and makes peace with sin. But when the Spirit of God gives life, the believer can no longer live comfortably with what dishonours Christ.

“For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (Galatians 5:17).

This is why the Christian life often feels like war. The old desires still rise. The flesh still resists holiness. Temptation still presses hard. But something has changed. The believer now hates what he once defended, grieves what he once enjoyed, and runs to Christ for mercy and strength.

Paul knew this battle. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). That cry did not come from a careless man. It came from a man who hated the sin still clinging to him and longed for full deliverance.

So do not measure the Spirit’s work by whether you feel no struggle. A struggle against sin may be evidence that grace is alive in you. The Spirit does not make peace with the flesh. He teaches us to put sin to death.

“If by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

The true believer does not fight perfectly, but he fights. He falls, but he does not settle. He confesses, rises, runs back to Christ, and keeps warring against the sin Christ died to save him from.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Do not fear because your prayer is stammering, your words are feeble, and your language is poor. Jesus understands the cry of the heart even when the lips struggle to speak.

Prayer is not powerful because our sentences are polished. Prayer is heard because we come to the Father through Christ. The weakest cry from a broken heart is not despised by God.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).

Sometimes the soul is too heavy to speak clearly. Sometimes sorrow, fear, guilt, weakness, or confusion leaves us with only a few words. But the Lord does not need eloquence to know His child. He knows the groaning beneath the words.

“In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should” (Romans 8:26).

So come to Him. Come with broken words. Come with tears. Come with trembling. Come when you do not know how to explain what is happening inside you. Christ is not confused by weak prayers. He is a merciful High Priest who sympathises with our weaknesses.

“Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

Your prayer may sound poor to you, but if it rises from faith in Christ, it is heard by the Father.

[Scott Roberts @ScottRoberts]

Many men want influence.

Far fewer want responsibility.

But biblical leadership is not about control, status, or being admired. It is about carrying weight, serving sacrificially, and answering to God for how you lead your home.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. And at the end of the day, fallen man still tries to blame God.

That is what sin does. It does not only rebel. It hides. It excuses itself. It looks for someone else to carry the guilt. Man will blame his upbringing, his pain, his weakness, his circumstances, the devil, other people, and even God Himself before he will honestly say, “I have sinned.”

When God confronted Adam, Adam said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). That was not only blame toward Eve. It was blame thrown upward toward God. The heart of man has not changed.

Eve then said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13). The guilt was passed again. But God was not deceived by the excuses. Each one was held responsible.

This is why we need grace. We do not naturally confess sin honestly. We protect ourselves. We explain ourselves. We soften our guilt. But true repentance stops hiding and comes into the light.

David did not say, “My circumstances made me do it.” He said, “Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4).

That is where mercy begins to shine. Not when we successfully shift the blame, but when we stop defending ourselves and fall before God with the truth.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

The gospel does not give us a scapegoat to avoid guilt. It gives us Christ, the true Substitute, who bore the guilt His people could never excuse away.

[Mike Winger @MikeWingerii]

It’s a sign of true humility, awareness of sin, and confession of the justice of God when you can say that God is justified if he were to condemn you for your sin.

“Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”
Psalm 51:4

God is blameless in his judgment. In other words he is right to judge you guilty and this is a good and humble thing to acknowledge. It’s also scary.

But go read Psalm 51 in full because it’s not a chapter about condemnation. It’s about mercy and grace and if you are struggling with properly repenting of sin please read Psalm 51 as a model for how to approach God.

It may change your life.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness deep enough to satisfy the soul. Man was not made to be filled by comfort, success, pleasure, applause, money, ministry, or human love. These things may have their place, but none of them can bear the full weight of an immortal soul.

God alone is the fountain of true joy. “In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11). That means real happiness is not found merely in receiving gifts from God, but in having God Himself as our portion.

The heart remains restless when it seeks satisfaction in created things. The world can distract the soul, excite the soul, and numb the soul for a time, but it cannot satisfy the soul. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:2). That thirst was placed in us by God, and only God can meet it.

This is why the believer must learn to say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25). That is not the language of a man who has lost everything. It is the language of a man who has finally found the only One who is enough.

The enjoyment of God is not an added blessing to the Christian life. It is the heart of it. To know Him, love Him, worship Him, trust Him, and be satisfied in Him is the happiness for which the soul was created.

[PaulsCorner-VerseQuest @TNTJohn1717]

🚨‼️The law can tell you what’s wrong, but it can’t make you right. It can diagnose the disease, but it can’t cure it. That’s why God gave the law: not as a salvation plan, but as a spotlight that exposes sin and leaves every man guilty before Him. The law is holy, just, and good, but it is powerless to save because it speaks to the flesh, and the flesh doesn’t obey, it resists.

Grace is God stepping in where the law stops. The law demands righteousness; grace provides it in Jesus Christ. The law says “do and live,” but grace says “it is finished.” The law condemns the guilty; grace justifies the ungodly who believe. You don’t graduate from the law into grace by improving, you come to grace because the law proved you can’t improve enough.

The biggest trap is trying to use law to maintain what grace gave. People get saved by grace and then get put right back under rules as though Christ only started the work and now they must complete it. That’s how joy dies, assurance collapses, and believers live in constant self-inspection. The Christian life becomes a courtroom again after God already settled the verdict. That isn’t holiness, that’s spiritual amnesia.

So let the law do its job and let grace do its job. Let the law drive you to Christ, and let grace teach you to walk with Him. Obedience under grace isn’t less serious, it’s more sincere. Law can restrain a man outwardly; grace changes him inwardly. And God has always been after the heart.

[Scott Roberts @ScottRoberts]

Pride is the religion of self.

It whispers:
"You deserve more."
"You know better than them."
"You don't need correction."
"You are the center."

But pride turned angels into demons, kings into fools, and religious men into enemies of Christ.

Kill self before self destroys you.

[PaulsCorner-VerseQuest @TNTJohn1717]

🚨‼️Scripture versus emotions is the difference between living by truth and living by turbulence. Emotions are real, but they are not reliable. They are gauges, not guides. If you let feelings steer you, you’ll end up calling fear “wisdom,” calling lust “love,” calling anger “discernment,” and calling pride “conviction.” The heart can feel strongly and still be wrong.

That’s why God didn’t give you a mood to stand on, He gave you a Book. Scripture doesn’t change with your hormones, your sleep, your stress, or your circumstances. It stays settled when you’re up and when you’re down. Emotions fluctuate like weather; the Word stands like a rock. A believer who trusts feelings over Scripture will always be spiritually unstable, because he’s trying to build a house on waves.

The devil loves emotional Christians who are Bible-light, because he can move them with a song, a story, or a scare. They’ll mistake adrenaline for the Holy Ghost and sadness for repentance. But the Spirit of God works through the Word of God, not around it. If an “experience” contradicts Scripture, it isn’t spiritual, it’s deception.

So keep your emotions in their place. Let them be honest, but don’t let them be boss. Bring every feeling to the Bible and let the Bible judge it. The safest Christian is not the one who feels the most, but the one who believes the most. When Scripture rules, emotions settle. When emotions rule, Scripture gets edited.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

Men will never worship God with a sincere heart while they still think lightly of His mercy. A shallow view of mercy produces shallow worship. But when a man begins to see what God has spared him from, what Christ has borne for him, and what grace has freely given him, his heart is brought low before the Lord.

We do not fear God rightly until we know that we deserved judgment and received mercy instead. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). That truth does not make a believer careless. It makes him tremble with gratitude.

True obedience does not grow from pride, self righteousness, or religious duty alone. It grows from a heart conquered by mercy. Paul says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). Notice the order. Mercy first. Then sacrifice. Grace first. Then obedience.

A man who thinks he deserves God’s favour will never worship deeply. But the man who knows he deserved wrath and was shown mercy will not treat God lightly. He will say with David, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits” (Psalm 103:2).

The more clearly we understand our debt to mercy, the more sincerely we worship, fear, obey, and love the God who saved us. Grace does not weaken devotion. Grace creates it.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

The natural man is offended by almost everything except the sin that is destroying him. He is offended by truth, holiness, correction, judgment, repentance, and the exclusive claims of Christ, but he is not offended by rebellion against God.

That is the blindness of the fallen heart. It can defend evil, excuse pride, celebrate corruption, and still call God unjust for judging it. Scripture says, “The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God” (Romans 8:7). This is not mere weakness. It is hostility.

The natural man does not hate sin as sin. He hates the consequences, shame, exposure, and pain that sin brings. But he does not hate sin because it offends God. That is why he can be deeply sensitive to personal insult and completely numb to divine holiness.

“A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Until grace opens the eyes, man will call darkness light, defend the chains that bind him, and be offended by the very truth sent to save him.

Only the Holy Spirit can make a man see sin for what it is and Christ for who He is. Without that work of grace, man will keep protecting the disease while rejecting the cure.

[Skeletor 🧼🧽🫧 @TheMuppetPastor]

I learned an interesting fact the other day about Jesus’ lineage.

Some of you know this, but one of his ancestors was Ruth, the Moabite, and heroine of her own book.

What I had forgotten was this verse:

““No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever,”
Deuteronomy 23:3 ESV

NO Moabite could enter the assembly of the Lord? This harsh punishment was a result of Moab’s many sins against their cousin, Israel (sons of Lot and born of incest) when they tried to hire Balaam to curse the Hebrews, when they refused to help their cousins, when they invaded, and when their wicked religion butchered infants to their pagan gods.

So why was Ruth able to not only become Hebrew, but to be a proud member of the line of David, and later, Jesus?

“But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Ruth 1:16 ESV

Ruth the Moabite did more than pledge loyalty to Naomi; she rejected her culture, her gods, and her old life, choosing the true God instead. Ruth was not subject to the curse against Moab because she was penitent, humble, and a convert.

God punished the host who violently opposed him and embraced sin even when they knew a better way. Moab knew about God; Lot was a follower, but they chose wickedness instead. Yet God forgave anyone who abandoned wickedness and returned to Him.

More than just a love story; Ruth is a reminder that God forgives all who seek His face.

[Immortal Tessy @TheresaArueyin1]

The Gospel is not God hatefully saying, ‘Turn to Me or I’ll send you to hell.’

The Gospel is God’s mercy and grace saying, ‘You’re already on your way to hell, turn to Me, and I will save you.’