1 John 4.3 declares 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.
The new god of this age is the god of tolerance. This god is intolerant of anyone who fails to pay homage to it. Yet if we think carefully and critically we know how weak this god really is. (more…)
John 3.30 summarizes the Christian life: He must become greater; I must become less.
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…)
2 Peter 1.10 exhorts us to make every effort to confirm our calling and election.
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…)
Psalm 68.19 declares, praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, Who daily bears our burdens. God
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…)
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.
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…)
Isaiah 1.13 commands, Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me….I
cannot 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…)
Titus 2.10 commands we make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
The purpose of this command is so that God’s people can participate in God’s work of making Him known throughout the world. The goal is not just that He would be known but that He would be loved by every person on the earth.
God wants His people to live such attractive lives that people around them feel compelled to know God so they too can love Him.
How are we doing? (more…)
Titus 1.1 claims it is their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
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…)
Ecclesiastes 7:29 records God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many
schemes.
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…)
Mark 14.38 commands watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing,
but the flesh is weak.
Watch means read the Book, understand what it says so that when you see things happening you can interpret them properly. Pray, so that the Spirit within is able to overpower the flesh without that is unwilling to obey the prescription found in the Book.
While Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for humanity’s disobedience, this was not done to give license to the children of God to disobey the commands of God. (more…)
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