Christian Living

Life is a Marathon

2 Chronicles 36:13 records Zedekiah was a hard and stubborn man so far as obeying the Lord God of Israel was concerned, for he refused to follow Him.images

The Bible does a lot of recording of how people finished their lives.

Any of us can run a ten yard sprint. Some of us can run a 100 yard dash but very few of us could run a marathon. What’s the difference? Focus, commitment, training.

Living on earth is a marathon and not a sprint. (more…)

0 Comments
December 31, 2014
Christian Living / evangelism / obedience

God’s goal for 2015

Malachi 2:6 describes he passed on to the people all the truth he got from me. He did not lie or cheat; he walked with me, living a good and righteous life, and turned many from their lives of sin.images

In this description of one of God’s favorite people, Levi, He is describing the role of the priest. At least among the Protestants, the belief is held that all Christians are now priests. The tribe of Levi has been replaced with the Spirit filled people of God who walk by faith and obedience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. (more…)

1 Comment
December 29, 2014
Christian Living / Free Bible Reading Plan / obedience

Seeing More of God

John 14:23 reveals I will only reveal Myself to those who love Me and obey Me.th

God loves everyone but God does not treat everyone the same.

God loves everyone as He demonstrated by coming to earth as a man to die as a sacrifice so that all humanity might be pardoned for all their evil done against God and one another. Yet not all of humanity will receive God’s pardon nor will all recognize Jesus as God the Savior while they continue in this life living selfishly and ignoring the commands of God.

It is only those who love God as demonstrated by obedience to God that see God and experience His presence in their lives. (more…)

0 Comments
December 24, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

Feeling Bad

John 12:25 warns if you love your life down here—you will lose it. If you despise your life down here—you will exchange it for eternal glory.image

For a long time I understood this instruction from God to mean I was to despise the way I lived in disobedience to Him. I thought if I was really connected with God my disobedience to Him which is so consistent, would grieve me to such a degree that I would despise myself.

My logic flowed from understanding the opposite of this thinking. Those who ignore God have a good time doing those things that displease God without regret or concern (much of the time), so the opposite must be true as well. Those who seek to please God but find themselves constantly falling short must despise themselves for their poverty of godliness. (more…)

0 Comments
December 23, 2014
Christian Living / Theology

man as God or God as man?

Luke 1.35 proclaims the child to be born will be called the Son of God.images

Christmas is the Christian holiday of celebrating the arrival of God to earth as a man in order to become the human sacrifice for God.

The original sin, and all sin since then, can be boiled down to the single issue of man wants to be god. Our anger is a direct reflection of this inherent bent for our angry feelings reflect our unhappiness with the fact that all is not going according to our sovereign will.

Buddhism, Hinduism and Mormonism all have as their end game the divinity of their adherents if they are faithful to follow their religious teachings. This is the ultimate expression of that inherent desire to be god; the all controlling, all powerful, all worshiped, all adhered to, all envied being we wish we would become. (more…)

0 Comments
December 22, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

Tested or Tempted?

James 1:13 teaches us, when someone wants to do wrong it is never God who is tempting him, for God never wants to do wrongimages and never tempts anyone else to do it.

What is the difference between a temptation and a test?

The Bible declares that God has tested people but that He does not tempt people. Likewise, the Apostle Paul commands us to test ourselves to see if we are still in the faith.

Neither temptation nor testing is wrong only our response to them. God was tempted while living among us as a Man by His enemy the devil and passed those temptations without compromise. God never fell to temptation because it is not in His nature to do so which is also why He never uses temptation against a person.

So what is temptation? (more…)

2 Comments
December 18, 2014
Christian Living / Theology

The Purpose of Communion

John 6:54 promises anyone who does eat My flesh and drink My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him at the Last Day.image

We call this symbolic participation in the body and blood of Christ the Eucharist, Communion or the Lord’s Supper. The earliest church practiced this event at every gathering, a tradition still in place by some of the Church.

But what is this eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood?

Many of the first disciples who heard God say this walked away from Him thinking He had lost His mind. Muslims find this teaching barbaric even cannibalistic proving in their minds the falsity of the Christian religion.

So what is God inviting us into when He invites us to supper with Him and He is the main course? (more…)

0 Comments
December 16, 2014
Christian Living

Being a Good Example

John 5:17 records “My Father constantly does good, and I’m following His example.”images

Whoever claims to live in Christ must walk as Jesus did the beloved Apostle John wrote in his first letter to the church. How did God the Son walk? He followed the example of God the Father.

How should we as the children live? We should follow the example of God the Son. Simple really but not easy for the requirement of putting others first before ourselves is immensely difficult and to know what Jesus did we must be students of Who Jesus is.

God in Jesus set before us the example of seeking God the Father diligently through the Scriptures and through prayer. (more…)

0 Comments
December 15, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

True Love

Revelation 2:5 Think about those times of your first love (how different now!) and turn back to Me again and work as you did imagebefore; or else..

While we all have felt love we all know that love is doing more than feeling.

In romantic love the feelings are overwhelming and they cause us to do many acts of good toward the one we love. When those feelings diminish over time too often the acts diminish as well sometimes resulting in a termination of the relationship.

God describes love in a couple of different ways. (more…)

2 Comments
December 11, 2014
Christian Living

Proving we are Children of God

3 John 1:11 reminds us that those who do what is right prove that they are God’s children; and those who continue in evil prove imagethat they are far from God.

In Christianity, getting to heaven is easy, at least for us, but living as though we are residents of heaven is hard. God made getting to heaven easy by offering freely a pardon to us through His Son Who sacrificed Himself as payment for us.

It cost God His most precious possession to secure His most precious creation: His Son for you and me. For those of us who believe God, He has given us the right to be declared children of God; forever forgiven and forever sealed for spending eternity with Him in heaven and upon the new earth.

Christians don’t have to do anything because everything that was required for getting into heaven has been done by the Son and has been credited to those who humble themselves before God in submission to the Son of God Who is Jesus Christ the Lord. (more…)

0 Comments
December 8, 2014