A Unique Believers Manual. For those who want to learn the TRUTH of God's Word

  For my 3rd ❤️ When we hear the word “discernment,” we often think of knowing when something is not quite right. We may say, “I just discerned something about that person,” or “I had a feeling about that situation.” But when we come to Scripture, discernment is much deeper than just a feeling. The Bible does not present discernment as suspicion, natural cleverness, or simply being good at reading people. Discernment is the ability to understand, distinguish, examine, and recognize according to what is true. When we follow that idea through the Torah, the Books of the Prophets, and the New Testament, we discover that discernment is something God wants His people to learn. One of the important Hebrew roots behind this idea is בִּין , bin . It is used for understanding, perceiving, and discerning, and its related forms describe insight and understanding. But we need to let the context show us what the word means rather than trying to make one Hebrew word carry every shade of t...

Have you ever been overwhelmed? I mean really overwhelmed, where there is so much coming at you that you do not even know which thing to deal with first. One problem is enough to keep you busy, but then another one shows up, and before you have had time to get your head around that one, something else happens. Add family concerns, responsibilities, financial worries, things happening in the world, people who are difficult, things you cannot change, and things you cannot even understand, and suddenly your mind feels like somebody dumped the contents of a junk drawer onto the kitchen table and told you to sort it all out before supper. Sometimes it is not even one particular thing that overwhelms us. It is the accumulation of everything. Then there is the world. Oi Vey! Sometimes you can turn on the news for less than five minutes and feel as though you have just been handed a hundred more things to worry about. Crime, violence, corruption, hatred, suffering, political foolishness, peo...

For Aaron There is something many people wonder about, even if they never say it out loud: “Will I really make it?  Will I be among those who receive the promises of God? Have I done enough?  Am I worthy?”  Some people look at their past and think they have disqualified themselves. Others look at their present struggles and wonder whether a person who still battles temptation, fear, anger, weakness, or doubt can truly be called victorious.  Some have even been taught to think that victory means reaching a place where they never fall, never struggle, never make a mistake, and never have another bad day.  If that were the standard, none of us would have much hope.  But that is not the victory the Bible teaches us about . Jesus said something very important before He went to the cross: “In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world” ( John 16:33 ). Notice what Jesus did not say.  He did not say that His followers wo...

TURN BACK When we hear the word “repent,” most of us probably think we already know what it means. We have heard it preached, we have heard people say it, and we have probably said it ourselves. Usually, we think of being sorry for something we did wrong. There is nothing wrong with being sorry, of course, but the Bible gives us a much bigger picture than simply feeling bad and saying, “I'm sorry.” Repentance has to do with what happens after you realize you are wrong. It has to do with what you do with that realization. Let's say you are following your GPS to get somewhere and suddenly realize you have been going the wrong way for the last twenty minutes. You look at the screen and say, “Ohhhh. I was supposed to turn back there.” You can be as sorry as you want about missing the turn, but if you keep driving in the same direction, you are still going the wrong way. You can apologize to your passengers, apologize to the GPS, and probably apologize to yourself, but none of t...

There is something about Yeshua that sets Him apart from every other human being who has ever walked this earth. He knew who He was. He knew where He came from and He knew who had sent Him. He knew what He had been sent to do, and He knew where He was going. Because His identity was secure, He did not have to spend His life proving Himself to other people. When we say that Yeshua had no ego, we need to understand what we mean. We are not saying that He lacked confidence, personality, authority, dignity, or any understanding of His own identity. He knew exactly who He was. He spoke with authority, confronted hypocrisy, corrected people, and refused to be manipulated. He could stand before powerful religious leaders and tell them the truth without backing down. There was nothing weak or uncertain about Him. What Yeshua did not have was the human need to make Himself important in the eyes of other people. He did not need applause, constant recognition, titles, or admiration to e...