Romans 2:4 explains that God’s kindness is intended to lead us to repentance?
God is good.
Not everyone believes this and some have life experiences such that it is indeed hard to believe. Yet not one of us gets treated in this life as our rebellion and disobedience against God deserves. Herein lies the problem. (more…)
Acts 20:26 comments I am innocent of the blood of any of you.
The Apostle Paul understood completely his mission to tell others about God’s offer of a pardon to all of humanity through Jesus His Son for all the evil humanity has ever done against God. Paul remembered the warning God gave to the prophet Ezekiel about failure to not warn Israel of approaching judgment.
God intended to hold Ezekiel accountable for faithfully declaring His command to repent lest the people perish without opportunity to make amends with God. Paul understood that God, by entrusting His message to His people of forgiveness through Jesus, held the same expectations for Christians as He had for Ezekiel. (more…)
Acts 16:34 describes he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God.
What’s the difference between being happy and having joy?
I would suggest happiness is a result of circumstances and joy is the result of attitude. Feelings tell me whether I am happy or not but conviction tells me I have joy.
Interestingly, God promises joy but not happiness. (more…)
Matthew 12:30 observes whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me
scatters.
On occasion in the gospels, Jesus, God Who has become man, throws down the gauntlet and demands we choose sides. This passage is one of those times when Jesus invites us to separate ourselves into wheat or chaff.
What does it mean for us when God demands we choose but we refuse to even engage the discussion? (more…)
Matthew 7:14 warns small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
This generation finds offensive God’s instruction that He has only one way for entering heaven. It seems more fair, more loving, more gracious for all religions to be acceptable to God so that all people can get to heaven.
The problem with this thinking is that it ignores the love of God and the sacrifice God made for saving people. (more…)
Matthew 6:19 commands ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.’
When God lived among us He said, ‘do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth.’ We need to read that again slowly, thinking carefully about His words. God said, ‘do not store up treasures on earth.’
Yet most of us ignore Him. We are like the Israelites we read about in the Bible who constantly ignore God’s commands so we find ourselves shaking our heads at their disobedience and subsequent negative consequences. (more…)
Matthew 5:3 proclaims blessed are the…
Most likely there is no one on the planet who doesn’t want to be blessed by God. There is an entire Christian industry claiming wealth and health to all those who know God and have faith in Him (and give generously to His messengers).
The thinking we associate with blessing is always around money, influence and power, not the things God identifies as blessing when He lived among us in the Man, Jesus. God has told us what it means to be blessed by Him.. (more…)
Luke 1.35 proclaims the child to be born will be called the Son of God.
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…)
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.
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…)
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
before; 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…)
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