Photo of the Week: January 21, 2026

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Don Merritt
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Walking around one day, I came upon a small lake full of turtles. Always happy to make new friends, I just had to get a shot or two!

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Test the Spirits

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Don Merritt

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

1 John 4:1-3

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Oh, my word what a timely text!  With the previous chapter ending by saying that we can know that Jesus lives in us because of the (Holy) Spirit He gave us, now John takes another step forward in our experience.  How can we tell who is right and who is not?

Simple: Test the spirits.

Well, it is simple, but at first it sounded a little creepy to me. On closer examination, however, it isn’t creepy and it isn’t hard.  Does a teacher or commentator acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh?  Do they acknowledge Him at all? If they do, they are from God; if they don’t, they are not from God. If they don’t acknowledge Jesus, they aren’t from God, they are antichrist. If this is so, would we consider them a reliable source of insight?  Well, you can decide that one…

 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

1 John 4:4-6

John finishes this thought in these verses, making his point even clearer.  We have overcome the spirit of antichrist, because the Holy Spirit within us is greater by far that the spirit of antichrist could ever dream of being.  Interesting points to bear in mind when reading commentaries, blogs and books.  These false teachers speak from the viewpoint of the world, not from the viewpoint of God, and the world will listen to them. Yes, and while the world will listen to the false teacher, the spirit of antichrist, the world will not generally listen to us, for they simply can’t fathom what we are talking about, so let’s not be surprised by this.

I’ve spoken with many Christians who fear that they might be tricked and led astray, and I always tell them that they will not be tricked and led astray if they have a strong relationship with Christ.  That is precisely what John is asserting here.  It’s so simple to tell the difference, and when you were little, your mother or father probably told you how to recognize who is credible and who is not, for I’ll bet they told you to “consider the source.” To put it another way, I wouldn’t recommend that we take spiritual advice from an atheist, nor would I suggest that we should take Bible instruction from a non-believer.

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Relationships with other Christians

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Don Merritt
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Making disciples does not end with a person’s acceptance of Jesus Christ, for that is not the end of the process, it’s the beginning, and we can’t simply leave the new Christian all alone to struggle and despair by themselves… as so often is the case.  This whole aspect of relationship is every bit as crucial in helping young believers (of any age) as they move forward toward spiritual maturity.  Love, trust, and mutual respect are critical factors in mentoring one another, and we need to be just as intentional in building these relationships, as our Lord was when He demonstrated for us how it is done.

For me personally, this is the most exciting part of my life, when I see a younger Christian begin to grow spiritually.  The nature of their questions begins to change, you can usually tell by their questions just where they are on the journey.  Then their attitudes about various things begin to change, and then their behavior begins to change, until one day I see the person serving selflessly, often in a manner that I didn’t expect, but for which God has given them gifts of service. Yep, for me there is no greater satisfaction and joy in life; it is life to the full!

I realize that, once again, I have spoken in general terms, but remember that his road trip is not intended to be technical or academic, but rather a journey of ideas and discovery.  Tomorrow, back at base camp, we’ll have our closing rally, see you there!

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Do You Really Know for Sure?

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Don Merritt

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

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1 John 3:19-24

Chapter 3 of John’s first letter ends with the assurance that we can know for sure where we stand with God, but it isn’t the answer that most of us give if we are asked “how we know”…

John’s answer is that we know by the Spirit within us.

Well steady on there, isn’t that the Spirit that so many are waiting for…until “it” decides to move…? Yes, that one, the one that we say we can’t hear.

Yes, that’s the one John is referring to.

John takes a little different tack that we often do. He says that we will notice whether the Spirit within us condemns us, we know that God is greater than our hearts and knows all.  I think that many of us today use slightly different terminology for this by saying that we “feel convicted” about something.  When this happens, we have something to seek forgiveness for and have the need to alter our behavior or attitudes in some way.  When we are not condemned by our hearts, we are confident in His presence. We know that in saying these things, John is making reference to the work of the Spirit in our lives because he says so in the last part of the passage. Now, the remaining question is whether or not this is really true in our lives.

Over the years I’ve noticed that many people will tell me about their active prayer lives.  They will tell me all about the countless hours they spend with God and all the rest.  On other occasions, they will tell me that they never notice the Spirit working within them, and that’s how I know for sure that they don’t have any of this great prayer life they like to go on about.  The reason is that seeking His presence is how we can discern the Spirit that is within us.  Notice that John linked the two in verses 21 and 22:

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask,

You should notice something else here. Here’s verse 22 in full:

and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.

Yes, we will receive anything we ask in prayer, if we “keep his commands and do what pleases him.” As always in John’s writings, asking and receiving are mentioned firmly within the context of doing His will, and not in doing our will.

So, can you really know for sure where you stand with God?

YES!

Seek His presence and you’ll find out.

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Relationships… with other people

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Don Merritt

Our second session at Relationship Camp, is all about relationships with other people.  Nothing that I am about to say here is revolutionary; I would imagine that you already know all of this at some level of consciousness, but we don’t always think about these things.

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Consider your friends.  You know them, meaning that you know things about them such as what they like to talk about, what they like to do, what they do for fun and what they do for a living.  You know which ones are light-hearted and fun by nature, and which are more serious.  You know if there is a subject they are touchy about and you probably avoid it.  You are also aware which ones are very sharp mentally, and which ones are not quite as quick…

How do you know these things about your friends?

Isn’t it the case that you know these things about your friends because you’ve spent time, maybe years,  getting to know them?  As you get to know a person better, you will develop a sense of trust with that person, if they have shown themselves to be worthy of trust, right?  When you have a level of trust in your relationship with that person, you develop a sort of influence with them, which is to say that you can influence them and they can influence you to a certain degree, and in special cases, there may be such a level of trust and influence that you would trust them with your very life.  This is someone you can totally depend upon. Such a friend is worth his or her weight in gold, don’t you think?

Now, let’s take a step back from our thumbnail sketch of what a friend is, and look at what we already know that we can apply to serving our Lord.  We already know what kind of relationship will result in trust and influence, but if we want to lead someone to Christ, we need to pick out and understand the parts that will enable us to “lead.”

Suppose we are introduced to someone, and we smile, look them in the eye, shake their hand and say, “It’s nice to meet you Bob, even though you are a filthy rotten sinner, destined for the eternal fires of Hell.  Sit down so I can tell you about Jesus Christ.”  How do you think the conversation is going to go?  Did you make a good first impression?  Did you establish any sort of trust with that person?

In order for anyone to lead others, they must have one of two things with those they wish to lead.  They must either have power over them so they can force them to do what they want, or they must have a sufficient level of relationship with the other person so that the person will trust.  God has more than enough power and authority to force the entire human race to bow down before Him and worship, but He has not chosen to exercise His power and authority in this way.  Instead, He has entrusted you and I with the Good News of His grace that He freely offers to anyone who will choose to accept it, and He has charged you and I with taking that Good News to the world around us. This means that we must establish relationships based upon godly love, respect and trust with those around us just as Jesus did. Only when there is trust and mutual respect will other people be receptive to the Good News we have to share. If they do not see the love we share at work in our lives, our message will ring very hollow indeed. Often, when we fall short in this area it has something to do with a lack of humility, to be nice about it. At least, it might be worth considering.

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Love is Active

Posted on January 19, 2026 by Don Merritt
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This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-18

We now come to an amazing text regarding love and what it really is.  The concept of Christian love, love of our brother or sister, is not merely an abstract idea; it is a reality of life that requires action. John gives us the model of Christ as the example of what love looks like in action.  Jesus loved us, and so He set His own life aside so that we might live.  In the same way, John calls upon us to set aside our own lives for the sake of others.  This may not necessarily require our physical death, for there is more to the teaching of Christ than that− it will most certainly require that we set our interests aside to serve others.

John uses the specific example of one who has material resources giving them to a brother or sister who is in need. How can we possibly sit by and let our brother or sister suffer when we have the means to bring relief; to do so is not showing the person love.  We can think of other circumstances in which we may have what a hurting person might need, and we must not withhold aid, even though giving aid can be quite inconvenient.  Very often these days, we may come across a brother or sister who has emotional pain, and we must be ready to give whatever comfort and relief that we can.

Whatever the particular case may be, we must understand that loving one another doesn’t simply mean to be nice, it means to put others first in thought, and deed as well as in words. This is what it means to follow Jesus Christ; this is what it means to love one another.

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Relationships… with God

Posted on January 19, 2026 by Don Merritt

Welcome back to the bus!  We’re back on the road again on our journey of discovery, as we explore this theory:

“Christian theology is not particularly difficult to understand.  Its precepts and premises are fairly simple, it was given to “regular” guys to share with the world, and they did it.  Yes, of course they had a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, but then so do we. Yet we love to argue, follow tradition and form to avoid spiritual growth and reaching out, because they are counter-intuitive, and the fact that they are counter-intuitive is exactly the point of all things being new, for our human intuition isn’t new, it’s the old thing that Jesus died to free us from.”

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As we arrive here at Relationship Camp, I’ve broken our day’s session into two parts.  First, we’ll look at our relationship with God, and later, we’ll look at our relationships with other people. So, here we go looking into our relationships with God…

I would have to say that roughly half of the nearly 6,000 posts on this blog to date, are about our relationship with God.  I’ve posted about it from an academic/theological point of view, from an anecdotal point of view, from a relational point of view and in the narrative form, so I think the best way to proceed in this particular post is by relating general concepts, and that will keep with the method of the entire road trip, for this is not a technical or exhaustive study, but a conceptual one.

The first thing for us to always remember is that we have a relationship with God because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, where He shed His blood so that our sins can be forgiven.  We choose to be in relationship with Him by responding to the message of the Gospel, and when we do so, our sins are forgiven and we receive the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  It is this Holy Spirit within us that gives us direct relationship to God.

To experience this relationship, we need to seek His presence in our lives. We seek Him through the Scriptures.  We seek Him through prayer, and we seek Him through study and reflection.  Some of us may do a better job of these things than others, but there is something else that we might consider here.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Simple, isn’t it, to know God’s will for you! Let’s take a closer look…

Rejoice always

To say this, and then to say it’s God’s will for you, implies that Paul has said it in the imperative. “Hey, you over there!  Rejoice!” If it can be commanded, then it can be chosen, so rejoice always.  When things don’t go our way, we have a choice: We can let the circumstances get to us, or we can choose to rejoice in the Lord anyway.

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24 (KJV)

See where the choice is made? (“We will“) I’ve tried this and it works.  OK, I’ll admit that if there is enough headaches and hassles, sometimes I waiver, but it normally takes quite a bit.  Let’s just rejoice in our Lord even though it is sometimes counter-intuitive.

Pray continually

A special time of prayer and reflection are great, and I encourage everyone to do it, but it isn’t the only thing.  In fact, it’s the “beginner’s” thing.  The “Big Boys” never stop!  Seek God’s presence through constantly talking to God as you go through your day.  It is very hard work to be ticked off in the presence of God!  Tell God how much you love Him.  Tell Him that you are serving Him because you love Him.  Talk to God about your business, school or household activities and ask for His blessing or guidance upon them.  Tell Him that you want to do an especially good job at what you have to do because as His Ambassador, you want to serve Him because of how much you love Him.  Ask God to present you with opportunities to share His good news.  Do this in the morning as you drive to work, later do this through your work day.  Do this in the afternoon.  Do it in the evening, and do it some as you drift off to sleep.  You will be in His presence all the time, and your rejoicing will increase. The more we continue in this way, the more aware we will be of His presence, the more we will learn to view the world around us through His eyes, and not our own.

An interesting thing I’ve noticed here is that I view the world with a great deal less condemnation than I used to.  Oh, I see the godless stuff more clearly than ever, but my attitude is different; I yearn for its deliverance and emancipation from the evil that is so common.  I now feel for people like I haven’t before.  Things bother me much less than they used to, because I know that God is working His plan in and around me, and even though there are trials for me personally, I am excited to see how God has it all turning out.  Do this, even though it may seem strange (because it is counter-intuitive for many of us) you will be blessed beyond measure in His presence.

Give thanks in all circumstances

It’s easy to give thanks when you get that big raise and promotion, but when you get the layoff notice, “thanks” isn’t the first word you might think of.  Yet, we know that God loves us.  We know that He has gone to extreme lengths to set us free from sin and death, and we know that He has plans for us.  Just because business goes wrong doesn’t mean that anything has changed; a new chapter has begun.  Where will it lead, what new experiences will we have in His presence… is there a better job around the corner?  I can’t really say, but I’ve been around a long time, had many trials and challenges, and God has always worked things out for me.  Maybe not always to my liking at a given moment, but things have ended up better in the end.  Sometimes we go through “hard times” in this life in an economic sense, and grow by leaps and bounds at the same time spiritually.  Money will pass away, but our spirits are eternal; keep things in perspective and rejoice, pray continually and always be thankful.

This is all simple stuff.  Don’t get me wrong, it is very profoundly important, but it isn’t complicated.  Even when your natural inclination might be to go in a different direction, seek His presence, and your joy will be complete in Him.

See you next time for relationships part 2.

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A Little Bit of Light

Posted on January 18, 2026 by Don Merritt
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“I will sing of your love and justice; 
   to you, LORD, I will sing praise. 
I will be careful to lead a blameless life— 
   when will you come to me? “

Psalm 101:1-2a

David expresses what it is to live a godly life in this passage; recognize who and what God is, and respond. To consider God’s love and justice is certainly an awesome thing, and to take that all in and not respond with praise is almost unbelievable.

Yet, it isn’t just praise with which we should respond for in light of God’s justice, we also must respond in the way we live our lives.  David says that he will endeavor to lead a blameless life, and while he fell short of that goal, the Bible records that he was a “man after God’s own heart”.

I cannot claim to be blameless in my life, and I suspect that I have quite a bit of company in this, yet I believe that it is for us to respond to God with our best effort.  By His mercy, we’ll get there yet, and maybe we’ll bring a ray of His light into a troubled world.

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GUEST POST: The Paradox of Pursuit

Posted on January 17, 2026 by Don Merritt

I am very pleased to present a guest post by Ricky Lovestrand of https://religiousnutspiritual.com/ . I hope you enjoy his post here, and that you will check out his blog linked abouve.

How should a genuine seeker go about finding God? As it often does, the Bible gives us a
wonderfully simple and mysterious answer. If a person wants to find God, he must seek him
with all his heart and soul (Deuteronomy 4:29). And yet, if anyone would come to Jesus, it must
be granted by the Father (John 6:44). Two things must happen: a person must seek God, and
God must reveal himself. But just what should it look like exactly for a person to seek God with
all his heart and soul? Today when the term “seeker” comes up, we think of people who have
genuine curiosity or openness to religion. But the Bible does not say that God is looking for
“seekers.” He is looking for worshippers. And he will not reveal himself to anybody based on
whatever terms a person may dictate. In this short post, I won’t offer a comprehensive treatise
on how to seek God. But I would like to offer one essential part of the answer. God will not be
found by men and women who do not have humble hearts. A person must go low to meet the
Most High God.
The Bible frames the pursuit of God as always something more than an intellectual quest.
Perhaps the only person who radically encounters God in his pride is Paul, who is then
transformed with humility afterwards. The normative pattern we see in scripture is
encountering God through lowliness. God himself said “I dwell in the high and holy place, and
also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit” (Isaiah 57:15). It is the humble and faith-
filled persistence of the Syrophoenician woman who finds God in a miraculous healing. It is only
through his humility and repentance that David can find fresh fellowship with God once again.
God is even moved by the humble prayer of King Manasseh, despite his wickedness, to bring
him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then there’s the wise men, who come looking for Jesus
but doing so as worshippers. This echoes CS Lewis’ insight, “A proud man is always looking
down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see
something that is above you.” The modern conception of someone who seeks God as a mere
intellectual enterprise is completely foreign to scripture. And the irony is that seeking for God
merely intellectually could easily inflate a man’s pride. As his heart lifts itself higher, he may, as
Lewis wrote, find himself looking down on things and people—and missing what is above him.
But where does this leave the unbeliever? Shall he humble himself and call out to God in prayer
like David and King Manasseh? He should.
But here we run into a problem. We may say a non-believer could find God through prayer. But
how can a non-believer pray to a God he doesn’t yet believe exists? Shall we ask him to sacrifice
his intellectual honesty and integrity? Should he just fake it till he makes it? We’ve got a circular
problem. Unbelief is short circuiting the very channel through which he may be granted belief!
What are we to do?

Scripture itself provides a precedent for praying to God even if you don’t have clarity about his
character. Paul writes in Romans 1 that based on creation alone, it is evident that there is some
very powerful and eternal being. This fact by itself Paul says, is enough to obligate a person to
give thanks to such a being. I would argue that the non-believer does not need to pretend that
he believes in such a God. He does not need to fake it. There are enough reasons to make it
reasonable (such that his intellectual honesty would not need to be sacrificed) to humbly reach
out to such a God in prayer. Similarly, a non-Christian does not need to embrace every point of
the traditional doctrine of sin in order to humble himself. Our consciences bear witness to us
that we have fallen short of the glory of God. The seeker may not use that language, and that
seems fine to me. The point is that all of us are intimately acquainted with our shortcomings. I
believe that confessing them and sincerely reaching out this eternal and powerful being can be
done sincerely by an open, but non-Christian seeker. There’s no need at this point to embrace
every part of Christian doctrine. What’s needed is a contrite and lowly spirit. And if such a
seeker is willing to go low, and then even lower, he will find the one who has been highly
exalted and given “the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

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What we have Heard from the Beginning

Posted on January 16, 2026 by Don Merritt

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

1 John 3:11-15

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Well, we have heard this message from the beginning, that we should love one another.  A quick look through Christian blogs will reveal that everybody writes about it at one time or another… or every day.  Why does it take so long to sink in for so many?

John takes us right to the story of Cain and Abel, an interesting choice.  He tells us that Cain murdered his brother because Cain was following the evil one, that his actions were evil and Abel’s actions were righteous; murder was the result. Now to be fair to Cain, I’ve never heard this mentioned as a motive for murder on a detective show before.  The usual motives for murder are hatred, greed, fear of exposure, jealousy… wait!  Maybe that’s the one: jealousy!  He was jealous because Abel was righteous and Cain was evil, and that led to hatred, which led to murder.  I wonder if Perry Mason or DCI Barnaby would see it that way….

It would seem to me that John is suggesting that evil will oppress the righteous. Then he takes another interesting step, adding linkage that we should pay close attention to, because it takes the old story from Genesis and brings it starkly to life: Do not be surprised if the world hates you.

I never cease to be amazed when Christians act all horrified and indignant that certain elements in society oppose us at every turn.  What is surprising about that?  Certain elements in society murdered God’s prophets and opposed the Lord Himself to the point of death, not to mention the early church, and evil regimes all through the ages.  There is nothing new in any of this.  No, it is not a sign that the end is near, it is a sign that we are in the last age, just as John said his readers were…

We must love one another, because we have passed from death into life.  We must love one another because God first loved us and He also loves our brother, and we love our brother because we love God: This, too is nothing new.  How will the world know that we are in Christ? Because we love one another.  Will the world hate that?  Yes, but many will also want it and be attracted to it, because once you separate individuals from the society in which they live, they want what we have in Christ.  Therefore, loving one another spreads the Gospel and accomplishes God’s purpose.

Oh, sorry, I’ve gotten a little ahead of the text.  That’s coming…

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