Christian Living / obedience

God is Looking for Adventurers

2 Kings 18.5-6 observes, Hezekiah put his whole trust in the God of Israel. There was no king quite like him, either before or after. He held fast to God—never loosened his grip—and obeyed to the letter everything God had commanded Moses. And God, for His part, held fast to him through all his adventures. MSG

 

We should seek to be like Hezekiah: Holding fast to God, never loosening our grip on God, obedient to the letter of everything Jesus commands us. Then we will experience God holding us fast through all our adventures. What adventures are we taking for God? What are we doing that needs faith, trust, and earnest prayer?

 

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November 17, 2021
Christian Living / obedience

How Do We Know What Is Right And Wrong?

1 Corinthians 5.1-2 records, I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn’t be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you’re so above it all that it doesn’t even faze you! Shouldn’t this break your hearts? Shouldn’t it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn’t this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with? MSG

 

Why was this activity wrong? Where did the Lord Jesus condemn such actions? We have to turn to Paul’s Bible, what we call the Old Testament, to find this behavior of a man sleeping with his stepmother immoral. But we are under the New Covenant, why should this apply to us?

 

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September 8, 2021
Christian Living

Do You Really Know God?

Luke 13.23-27 asks, Master, will only a few be saved?” He said, “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re not on My guest list.’ “You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known You all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with His abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about Me. MSG

God is given the best possible question for telling us His heart, His future plans for humanity, His purpose for His work on earth. Will only a few be saved? Almost the entire church would answer, NO! Most of the church and the rest of humanity would answer, everyone will be saved because God is love. Yet that is NOT how God answers the question. (more…)

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August 18, 2021
Christian Living / Judgement / obedience

What It Means To Believe In Jesus

Acts 24.24-26 records, “A few days later Felix and his wife, Drusilla, who was Jewish, sent for Paul and listened to him talk about a life of believing in Jesus Christ. As Paul continued to insist on right relations with God and his people, about a life of moral discipline and the coming Judgment, Felix felt things getting a little too close for comfort and dismissed him. “That’s enough for today. I’ll call you back when it’s convenient.” At the same time he was secretly hoping that Paul would offer him a substantial bribe. These conversations were repeated frequently.” MSG

 

In his sharing of the gospel, the Apostle Paul tells us a few key elements of what it means to believe in Jesus. First, is the insisting upon a right relationship with God and His people. A right relationship with God must come through Jesus the Savior. Reconciliation to God comes by faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Apart from faith in Him, there is no peace with God. (more…)

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August 9, 2021
Christian Living

How To Interpret Your Circumstances

Jeremiah 24.4-10 says, God told me, “This is the Message from the God of Israel: The exiles from here that I’ve sent off to the land of the Babylonians are like the good figs, and I’ll make sure they get good treatment. I’ll keep My eye on them so that their lives are good, and I’ll bring them back to this land. I’ll build them up, not tear them down; I’ll plant them, not uproot them. “And I’ll give them a heart to know Me, God. They’ll be My people and I’ll be their God, for they’ll have returned to Me with all their hearts. “But like the rotten figs, so rotten they can’t be eaten, is Zedekiah king of Judah. Rotten figs—that’s how I’ll treat him and his leaders, along with the survivors here and those down in Egypt. I’ll make them something that the whole world will look on as disgusting—repugnant outcasts, their names used as curse words wherever in the world I drive them. And I’ll make sure they die like flies—from war, starvation, disease, whatever—until the land I once gave to them and their ancestors is completely rid of them. MSG

 

The good figs, the blessed by God, were those taken as prisoners from Israel. They were the ones who walked in chains to far off Babylon. Nothing about that event could have felt like a blessing. Yet they were the ones God said were blessed, the ones He was watching over, the ones whose hearts He would return to Himself and eventually would have their ancestors return to the Promised Land.

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August 2, 2021
Christian Living

Are You An Apprentice of Jesus?

Matthew 5.1-3 observes, when Jesus saw His ministry drawing huge crowds, He climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to Him, the committed, climbed with Him. Arriving at a quiet place, He sat down and taught His climbing companions. This is what He said: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule. MSG

 

Do you long to be with Jesus? Have you apprenticed yourself to Him? Have you paid to learn from Him, to be with Him, near Him, in order to learn from Him? Are you practicing His works to master His ways so that you are easily identified as one of His, having been with Him? (more…)

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June 30, 2021
Christian Living / Judgement / obedience

Who Are We Listening To?

Deuteronomy 29.14-21,29 records, I’m not making this Covenant and its oath with you alone. I am making it with you who are standing here today in the Presence of God, our God, yes, but also with those who are not here today. You know the conditions in which we lived in Egypt and how we crisscrossed through nations in our travels. You got an eyeful of their obscenities, their wood and stone, silver and gold junk-gods. Don’t let down your guard lest even now, today, someone—man or woman, clan or tribe—gets sidetracked from God, our God, and gets involved with the no-gods of the nations; lest some poisonous weed sprout and spread among you, a person who hears the words of the Covenant-oath but exempts himself, thinking, “I’ll live just the way I please, thank you,” and ends up ruining life for everybody. God won’t let him off the hook. God’s anger and jealousy will erupt like a volcano against that person. The curses written in this book will bury him. God will delete his name from the records. God will separate him out from all the tribes of Israel for special punishment, according to all the curses of the Covenant written in this Book of Revelation………God, our God, will take care of the hidden things but the revealed things are our business. It’s up to us and our children to attend to all the terms in this Revelation. MSG

 

The sign of our commitment to God is our obedience to the Word of God. Are we Christians? Then like Christ we seek to obey every word that comes from the mouth of our Father. His word is our bread, His will is our food, living His ways are the sign of the abundant, life giving, waters residing within us. (more…)

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June 24, 2021
Christian Living / evangelism

Getting Over Our Shame of God

John 9.20-23 records, his parents said, “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he came to see—haven’t a clue about who opened his eyes. Why don’t you ask him? He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.” (His parents were talking like this because they were intimidated by the Jewish leaders, who had already decided that anyone who took a stand that this was the Messiah would be kicked out of the meeting place. That’s why his parents said, “Ask him. He’s a grown man. MSG

 

Fear of men, shame of God, are the result of sin. We were created to love God and to serve Him, to encourage one another to stay true to God and to do His will together. Now, many of us, too often, love men more than God, at least their approval and their opinion. We often fear men despising us more than God condemning us.

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June 8, 2021
Christian Living / evangelism / Judgement

What Marketplace Christianity Looks Like

Luke 12.4-5,8-9 commands, I’m speaking to you as dear friends. Don’t be bluffed into silence or insincerity by the threats of religious bullies. True, they can kill you, but then what can they do? There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, Who holds your entire life—body and soul—in His hands………“Stand up for Me among the people you meet and the Son of Man will stand up for you before all God’s angels. But if you pretend you don’t know Me, do you think I’ll defend you before God’s angels? MSG

 

This is how Christians are to live in the marketplace. The answer to the question, what does it mean to be a Christian in the marketplace, is given here. Fear God alone, and make Him known, so that all might come to know Him as God and Savior. Simple but not easy. (more…)

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May 11, 2021
Christian Living / Theology

Following Jesus Is Not Following The Crowd

Ephesians 4.17-19, commands, and so I insist—and God backs me up on this— that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. MSG

 

Where is the crowd today? It is hell-bent on the road toward sexual perversion. So many who claim to be Christians are joining those who deny Christ on this same road. How? By supporting LGBTQ arguments, these ‘Christians’ advocate for tolerance of their behavior, acceptance of their ideology and even special legal privileges so that they cannot be rejected.

 

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March 24, 2021