Month: September 2023

pure water drop

You Can Make Progress Overcoming Your Key Fault

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Our lack of holiness can be very frustrating. We have the desire to be holy and to be Christlike but we struggle with our disordered desires for pleasure. Our culture provides many opportunities to satisfy our sensuality. As the passage below from Titus teaches, we have grace from God to reject worldliness and to be self-controlled. How do you make progress overcoming your key fault? Below is an exercise to help us receive God’s grace and to activate our will. It follows the general format of lectio divina. Do part or all of it and change it as you desire. For the complete guide go here. Purification Exercise: Read twice: Titus 2:11-14 (ESV): “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

You Have God’s Spirit

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You have the tremendous privilege of hosting God’s Spirit. If no one had God’s Spirit then it would be the dream of godly people to have God’s Spirit. But it is not a dream. “And in the last days it shall be, God declares,that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,and your young men shall see visions,and your old men shall dream dreams.” Acts 2:17 (ESV) The promise of God’s Spirit actually dwelling inside His people was one of the most important promises of the Old Testament. This indwelling would mean that God’s people would have the power to actually follow God’s directives for living. They would also have the power to be channels of God’s kingdom power on earth in order to fulfill God’s desire for people to hear from God and for healing hearts as well as bodies. Now Continue Reading →

butterfly

The Butterflies Of God’s Power

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At one point in the movie The Hobbit Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves are all trapped in a tree slowly tipping over a cliff while hordes of orcs are attacking. The situation looks hopeless but then, amid all the chaos, Gandalf spots a butterfly that has landed on the tree. He calls the butterfly to himself and whispers to it and it flies off. A few minutes later the situation has worsened and dwarves are about to start falling off the tree to their death. Just as the first dwarf falls off the tree a giant eagle swoops down and rescues the falling dwarf. The butterfly has summoned a convocation of eagles which comes and ravages the orcs and rescues Gandalf, Bilbo and all the dwarves. We too can experience the butterflies of God’s power. This story is a good illustration of how the Holy Spirit often comes to us. In the Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

We Will Wear Our Good Deeds Forever

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“”For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his bride has prepared herself. She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.” For the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people.” Rev. 19:7-8 (NLT) After Jesus returns we, the bride of Christ, will “wear” all the good deeds we have done in our life. They will hang perfectly and beautifully on our glorified bodies, radiating the glory of God. As we wear our good deeds for eternity they will remind us of the good that Jesus did through us in this life. This means that every good deed we do has eternal value, they are not forgotten. “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord” (Eph. 6:8, ESV). God will remember and reward us. Then our good deeds will beautify us for eternity! This may sound Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

Your Incredible Dignity – Weekly Word Of Encouragement

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“[Jesus] has made us a Kingdom of priests for God his Father” Rev. 1:6 (NLT) Way back in Exodus 19:6 God tells the Jews that they “shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (ESV). I Peter 2:9 says believers are “a royal priesthood.” This is an incredible dignity. One of the key principles of the Reformation was that all believers were priests, as these Scriptures state. As priests we are all directly serving God in Christ, we have no need of human intermediaries for a direct relationship with God. We are elevated to a high position of dignity, higher than any earthly office, higher than any President or Prime Minister. We are also God’s kingdom, his nation, we belong to him which is a greater honor than belonging to any other nation or group of people. God wants to give us glory that is greater than Continue Reading →