Transformed by Grace

 “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” --  Matthew 6:33 We’ve reflected on how God’s people once divided their hearts  through many wives, many desires, and many distractions. We’ve seen how we, too, can love God and love other things that quietly compete for His place. So how do we begin to reorder our loves? How do we move from scattered affection to steady devotion — from many loves to one wholehearted love for God? 🌿 1. Begin With Awareness and Ask: What Rules Me? Every heart has a throne. Something or someone sits on it. For some, it’s control. For others, comfort, reputation, or security. To reorder love, we first have to notice what has taken God’s seat. St. Ignatius of Loyola called this “discernment of spirits” — learning to see what draws us toward God and what quietly pulls us away. “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith.” --  2 Corinthians 13:5 A simple praye...

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” --  Matthew 22:37  In previous blog we read about how people in the Old Testament had many wives  and hence divided affections, divided households, divided peace. But if we’re honest, we do the same thing today… only differently. We may not have multiple spouses, but we often have multiple loves . Comfort. Success. Screens. Security. Approval. One heart, but pulled in a hundred directions. And in the quiet, God still whispers the same truth He spoke long ago: “You must love Me with all your heart.” 💔 When Our Hearts Have Many Loves Polygamy in the ancient world was physical; ours is spiritual. We say we love God; and we do but we also love being liked, being comfortable, being in control. And those loves compete. Just as Solomon’s many wives “turned away his heart after other gods” ( 1 Kings 11:4 ), our many attachments pull us away from the si...

During the  struggles of my 21-day fast in January I found myself wrestling with something very familiar and very uncomfortable. My intentions were sincere, my desire was real, and yet my weakness was loud. Accurately expressed in Romans 7:25 : “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” My mind wanted God. My flesh… not so much. As I sat with that thought, another passage crossed my path  Mark 1:25–27 , where Jesus rebukes an unclean spirit and it immediately obeys Him. The people around are stunned and ask, “What is this? A new teaching with authority!” And suddenly, something struck me. The evil spirits obey Jesus instantly  not because they want to, but because He is the Sovereign Lord  and they recognize His authority without question. That led me to a deeper, unsettling thought. Do humans not submit the same way because of our free will? But even the demons have free will which made rebellion possible....

 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” --  Genesis 2:24  When you read through the Old Testament, it can be confusing as we see: Abraham had Sarah and Hagar. Jacob had Leah and Rachel. David and Solomon had many wives. Yet Scripture also says from the very beginning that God made one man and one woman . So what happened? Did God change His mind? Or did something else happen between Eden and the time of the kings? 🌿 God’s Original Plan Was Always One and One In Genesis, marriage is described not as a contract or a social arrangement, but as a union . “The two shall become one flesh.” It’s not “many becoming one,” but two . It was God’s design that love that mirrors His own faithfulness: total, exclusive, and permanent. When Jesus was asked about divorce, He didn’t quote Moses but went further back to creation. “From the beginning it was not so.” --  Matthew 19:8 He was reminding t...

“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” --  Genesis 4:7  There’s a quiet moment in Scripture that feels deeply human — God speaking to Cain after He accepts Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. Cain’s face falls. He burns with jealousy. And instead of turning toward God, he begins to turn inward — brooding, comparing, resenting. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? That slow simmer inside when someone else gets the recognition, the affection, the answered prayer — and we don’t. But God steps in. He doesn’t condemn. He warns . “Sin is crouching at your door.” It’s such a striking image — sin isn’t far away; it’s close, waiting for a moment of weakness, ready to slip in through a crack in the heart. Yet God adds something powerful: “Its desire is for you, but you must master it. ” He tells Cain that sin wants to control him — but it doesn’t have to . That same truth hol...