Christian Living / faith / obedience

How to Know God Better

Isaiah 43.10 describes ‘You are My witnesses,’ declares the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He.image

How do we get to know God better and more personally is the universal question among those who truly believe in God. Religion provides a means to that end sometimes and in some ways. The disciplines of Bible reading and prayer are certainly helpful to knowing God better.

God wants us to accomplish our objective so has given us two clues for knowing, believing and understanding Him. (more…)

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June 11, 2015
Christian Living / obedience

Doing or Being or Both?

Deuteronomy 6:25 promises if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.image

The Christian perspective of righteousness, right standing with God, is both a matter of being and doing. God requires righteous doing, without someone obeying Him perfectly no one can be right with God. The problem is no one can do what God requires perfectly all the time, maybe, none of the time.

Jesus did obey perfectly and can transfer His perfection upon everyone who calls upon Him for mercy. (more…)

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June 3, 2015
Christian Living / evangelism / obedience

Being less so He can become More

John 3.30 summarizes the Christian life: He must become greater; I must become less.image

John the Baptist makes simple both the process and the goal of the Christian life: Jesus must become increasingly clearer to us, in us and through us and we must become increasingly less proud, selfish and self-serving. John arrived at this conclusion because he saw himself as a servant of God.

Our occupation is the redemption of the world to God through Jesus Christ regardless of our vocation. Our vocation funds our occupation but the Christian life is simply being occupied with the work of seeing God’s kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven. (more…)

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May 21, 2015
Christian Living / heaven / Judgement / obedience

Spiritual Development

2 Peter 1.10 exhorts us to make every effort to confirm our calling and election.images

Most evangelical Christians define a person’s salvation by whether or not they believe they are going to heaven if they were to die today.

The answer they are looking for is the confession that the person invited Jesus into their lives to forgive their sins and believe His promise to receive them into His heaven forgiven because of His gracious pardon obtained through His shed blood. Satisfied they believe a person is saved because they made the proper confession they move on never to think again about this salvation we or they supposedly obtain. (more…)

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May 19, 2015
Christian Living / obedience

Alert and Sober

1 Peter 5.8 warns be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion imagelooking for someone to devour.

The Bible tells the story of God and His work in the world. In that story is an enemy, one who wishes to be like God but cannot since he too is created and not the Creator. His frustration results in his attack upon creation, particularly humanity, that part of creation the Creator made in His own image and which He most loves.

This enemy of God is a liar and deceiver, inviting people into beliefs and actions that promise them benefit but always bring remorse. The enemy of God is an integral part of the story for his role allows humanity to reveal their free will to love God on their own. (more…)

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May 18, 2015
Christian Living / Judgement

Living Burden Free

Psalm 68.19 declares, praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, Who daily bears our burdens. Godimage bears our burdens.

Does that really make any sense? No other religion other than Christianity makes such a claim.

Surely allah doesn’t bear anyone’s burdens. Most gods place burdens on humanity forcing us to get better by their impossible demands.

Our idols have the same burdensome propensity. We beat ourselves because we are not strong enough, smart enough, rich enough or pretty enough so we keep working trying to pacify that voice in our head that is never satisfied. (more…)

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May 11, 2015
Christian Living / Judgement

Mighty Stumps?

Isaiah 6.13 comments , though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.image

The Old Testament is a story of man’s continual rebellion against God demonstrated by injustice to one another followed by discipline from the Lord Who withholds His severest rage because He is deeply in love with His people and longs to demonstrate mercy and grace. (more…)

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May 8, 2015
Christian Living / obedience

The Fallacy of Religion

Isaiah 1.13 commands, Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me….I imagecannot bear your worthless assemblies.

The problem with the One True God is that He is not fooled by religion.

Religion is to be a means by which we express our love and worship toward God. Religion is not God, neither does it’s rituals please God, unless the life of the one performing the ritual is consistent in living a life pleasing to God.

We just finished the season of Lent where many Christians perform the duty of sacrifice in an effort to identify with Him Who sacrificed His life for humanity. I am always amazed how we equate giving up chocolate or beer with Jesus’ death on the Cross for sin. The disconnect seems pretty extreme to me. Is this even something God wants or expects from us? (more…)

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May 4, 2015
Christian Living / Titus

Getting Better

Titus 1.1 claims it is their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.image

What is the goal of our lives? Personal happiness? Peace? Joy? Fulfilled relationships? Godliness? The last one probably doesn’t make the top ten list for most people because pleasing God is something we think of generally and not specifically.

Sure we want to be good per se but we don’t pursue goodness for ‘goodness’ sake. We are so self absorbed that we believe we are pretty good and that God is pretty happy with us regardless of how much we really check in with Him to see if our belief is true.

So we go about seeking our own definition of importance trusting that if God isn’t good with it He will somehow make that known to us. (more…)

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April 22, 2015
Christian Living / Suffering

Created to be Good

Ecclesiastes 7:29 records God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many imagesschemes.

The answer to the question about why evil exists in the world always gets pushed back upon God as the culprit. The logic goes that if God were good and loving and all-powerful, He wouldn’t allow bad things to happen to good people.

The Bible portrays a different villain to the age old question; humanity. God made people good, because He is good, and since He made us in His image, male and female, we too were created good like Him (just without all the power). (more…)

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April 20, 2015