When I moved to California from Puerto Rico, I was 16 years old, and I came with a vocabulary of English words. In Puerto Rico, they teach children from kindergarten through high school English, so I came packed with knowledge of the English language.

I had a lot of words, but I did not have the wisdom to apply that into some sort of a conversation. It took me about eight months until I could actually have a conversation with someone and use some of those vocabulary words, because there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Charles Spurgeon said “Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the [...]

We all have a tendency to show favoritism, don’t we? We have a tendency to treat some people better than we treat others. I am grateful that God is not like us.

The issue of favoritism shows up in the Bible often. In James 2, he connects favoritism to lack of faith. Yikes! According to James, when we show favoritism, we are not demonstrating the character and the nature of God.

Let’s read James 2:1-13.

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special [...]

We have bumper stickers and Christian messages everywhere in our culture. Some have email address that are Christianized, like “IBelieveInJesusMySavior@howaboutyou.com.” But what good is it if we display or say those things but don’t show it in our lives? Our faith, for it to make a positive difference in the world, needs to be real. This is why James calls us to have genuine faith.

Let’s read James chapter 2:14-26:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; [...]

Words have tremendous power to hurt and to help. They can discourage, they can cause anger, they can cause separation, but words can also heal, they can encourage, they can lift up, and they can empower someone else. Words have an enormous amount of power.

When I was in seventh grade, I still lived in Puerto Rico, and my seventh-grade teacher gave us a special assignment. She told us to write a paper about an unlikely relationship. Our job was to pick two things that would normally not be friends and create a story about how the friendship was possible. I wrote a story about a friendship between a giraffe and an ant.

The paper apparently came out pretty good. I got an [...]