By Brother Brian Shimer “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.” (Matthew 22:36-40) Before this point of Matthew 22, Jesus had silenced the Sadducees. The Pharisees put forward a lawyer who asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” They thought, if Jesus named the greatest commandment, […]
The minimalist life is “living with things you really need. It means removing anything that distracts us from living with intentionality and freedom” (www.becomingminimalist.com). It is a lifestyle that seems to me to be easily spoken and written, but difficult to execute. The minimalist lifestyle calls for a measure of fasting and heart change to […]
By Brother Matthew Henson Robert Boyd Munger wrote the booklet, My Heart, Christ’s Home, in 1954. I was immediately drawn to this booklet when I was first introduced to it when I was on staff of Campus Life and Youth for Christ in Lexington, Kentucky in the early 2000s. In the opening section of the […]
By Brother Brian Shimer Have you ever had the experience of being bowled over? Not literally thrown off your feet, but spiritually, emotionally brought alive, shaken from one place to another, having your eyes opened to what was always there but never seen? Perhaps it happened in an especially moving worship setting, or under great […]
By Brother Doug Ruffle Author’s note: I was asked by staff of The Upper Room to record a short video in Spanish for their weekly broadcast, which is produced in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The following is an English language rendering of the video script. “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for […]
by Brother Matt Henson(During the month of January, the focus of the devotions will be on a Word for the Year. Different authors will provide a word they are focused on for 2024.) One of the blessings of traveling in ministry is experiencing the variety of daily schedules set forth at different camps, conferences, retreats, and […]
Written by Matthew Henson In the village of Sobier in Haiti, a person can stand at the edge of the village and look down on the greenish-blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. The beauty of the refreshing waters invites us to make the trek from the village down to the water. It is about a […]
Written By Matthew Henson Read Luke 2:1-20 For many years in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s, my dad sang in a Gospel Group with a gifted pianist and song writer named Juanita Atkinson. She wrote a song that spoke to the ongoing battle between the materialism of the season and the real […]
