Christian Living / Judgement / money / obedience

Pursuing Treasure

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.’images

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…)

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January 6, 2015
Christian Living

Blessed by God

Matthew 5:3 proclaims blessed are the…image

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…)

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January 5, 2015
Christian Living

Life is a Marathon

2 Chronicles 36:13 records Zedekiah was a hard and stubborn man so far as obeying the Lord God of Israel was concerned, for he refused to follow Him.images

The Bible does a lot of recording of how people finished their lives.

Any of us can run a ten yard sprint. Some of us can run a 100 yard dash but very few of us could run a marathon. What’s the difference? Focus, commitment, training.

Living on earth is a marathon and not a sprint. (more…)

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December 31, 2014
Christian Living / evangelism / obedience

God’s goal for 2015

Malachi 2:6 describes he passed on to the people all the truth he got from me. He did not lie or cheat; he walked with me, living a good and righteous life, and turned many from their lives of sin.images

In this description of one of God’s favorite people, Levi, He is describing the role of the priest. At least among the Protestants, the belief is held that all Christians are now priests. The tribe of Levi has been replaced with the Spirit filled people of God who walk by faith and obedience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. (more…)

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December 29, 2014
Christian Living / Free Bible Reading Plan / obedience

Seeing More of God

John 14:23 reveals I will only reveal Myself to those who love Me and obey Me.th

God loves everyone but God does not treat everyone the same.

God loves everyone as He demonstrated by coming to earth as a man to die as a sacrifice so that all humanity might be pardoned for all their evil done against God and one another. Yet not all of humanity will receive God’s pardon nor will all recognize Jesus as God the Savior while they continue in this life living selfishly and ignoring the commands of God.

It is only those who love God as demonstrated by obedience to God that see God and experience His presence in their lives. (more…)

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December 24, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

Feeling Bad

John 12:25 warns if you love your life down here—you will lose it. If you despise your life down here—you will exchange it for eternal glory.image

For a long time I understood this instruction from God to mean I was to despise the way I lived in disobedience to Him. I thought if I was really connected with God my disobedience to Him which is so consistent, would grieve me to such a degree that I would despise myself.

My logic flowed from understanding the opposite of this thinking. Those who ignore God have a good time doing those things that displease God without regret or concern (much of the time), so the opposite must be true as well. Those who seek to please God but find themselves constantly falling short must despise themselves for their poverty of godliness. (more…)

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December 23, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

Tested or Tempted?

James 1:13 teaches us, when someone wants to do wrong it is never God who is tempting him, for God never wants to do wrongimages and never tempts anyone else to do it.

What is the difference between a temptation and a test?

The Bible declares that God has tested people but that He does not tempt people. Likewise, the Apostle Paul commands us to test ourselves to see if we are still in the faith.

Neither temptation nor testing is wrong only our response to them. God was tempted while living among us as a Man by His enemy the devil and passed those temptations without compromise. God never fell to temptation because it is not in His nature to do so which is also why He never uses temptation against a person.

So what is temptation? (more…)

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December 18, 2014
Christian Living

Being a Good Example

John 5:17 records “My Father constantly does good, and I’m following His example.”images

Whoever claims to live in Christ must walk as Jesus did the beloved Apostle John wrote in his first letter to the church. How did God the Son walk? He followed the example of God the Father.

How should we as the children live? We should follow the example of God the Son. Simple really but not easy for the requirement of putting others first before ourselves is immensely difficult and to know what Jesus did we must be students of Who Jesus is.

God in Jesus set before us the example of seeking God the Father diligently through the Scriptures and through prayer. (more…)

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December 15, 2014
Christian Living / obedience

True Love

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 imagebefore; 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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December 11, 2014
Christian Living / Prayer

Why Pray?

Luke 18:1 declares Jesus told His disciples a story to illustrate their need for constant prayer and to show them that they must imagekeep praying until the answer comes.

Prayer is a mystery to most of us and therefore a difficult thing for us to consistently engage. On the one hand we think God knows everything so why should we pray?

Because God told us to pray doesn’t help us become more motivated to pray, we need a more compelling answer to our question. Because God modeled a life of prayer doesn’t help us either, we tend to dismiss some of Jesus’ activity because He is God and we don’t believe we have any chance of measuring up to Him anyway.

So why pray if God already knows everything anyway? (more…)

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December 5, 2014