https://youtu.be/bLze422Asbk “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djaJ6b_TOh0 ““Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” And He answered and said to them, “Why…
1 John 2:2-6, 9-11, 15-17 records, “I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But
if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When He served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep His commandments. If someone claims, “I know Him well!” but doesn’t keep His commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived. Anyone who claims to live in God’s light and hates a brother or sister is still in the dark. It’s the person who loves brother and sister who dwells in God’s light and doesn’t block the light from others. But whoever hates is still in the dark, stumbles around in the dark, doesn’t know which end is up, blinded by the darkness. Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” MSG
Summing up these verses as a Christian definition: obey Jesus by living like Jesus who displayed God’s love by loving people and not the world. Simple not easy. Our constant wanting is hard, whether it is wanting pleasure, power, or possessions. People are hard, they irritate and aggravate us. Obedience is hard, dying to self, making others more important than myself, serving constantly, giving generously, forgiving unconditionally, overwhelming!
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?
Daniel 5.24-28 records, God sent the hand that wrote on the wall, and this is what
is written: mene, teqel, and peres. This is what the words mean: “Mene: God has numbered the days of your rule and they don’t add up. “Teqel: You have been weighed on the scales and you don’t weigh much. “Peres: Your kingdom has been divided up and handed over to the Medes and Persians. MSG
For every man there lies ahead the judgement of God. This is when we will all stand before Him to give account to Him for how we lived on this earth in obedience to His commands. Most men plan to enter that day hoping their lives were ‘good’ and acceptable to God not based upon what God has said but based upon their own creation of what pleases God. (more…)
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…)
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…)
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…)
Matthew 7.13-14 commands, don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is 
flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention. MSG
The way to God, to know Him, is vigorous and requires total attention! Of course it does! God is great. He deserves our best effort and deepest pursuit. We must pursue Him. We must pick up the Scriptures, the writings He has generously given to us for knowing Him and how we are to live. (more…)
Mathew 4.4 records, Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: It takes more 
than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.
The first need for the men of the church is for them to be men in the word of God. We cannot know the will of God or the ways of God apart from the word of God. So much confusion exists in our society, including the church, over Who God is and what He requires. This confusion is the result of ignorance alone for God has given us clear detail of His workings in the world, the way in which He works and the works He requires men to do and for which they will be held accountable on that day they see Him face to face. (more…)
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