Category: Level: Intermediate

community

The Inspirational Story Of The Brethren Of The Common Life

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This is a story about some people who passionately lived out Christian community. In Scripture we see that God is inviting all people to join his new kingdom community. Since Jesus came and inaugurated this new community God has been calling people to himself and all who have received Jesus are members of this spiritual community. God has been adding members to this community through the centuries. After Jesus returns God will create a new heaven and new earth where all the members will live in the New Garden as God intended. This will be the culmination of the kingdom of God on earth. The story of Gerard Groote provides a good example of the kind of community God desires for his people now. Gerard Groote was born in 1340 in the Netherlands. His parents died of the plague when he was 10 and left him an inheritance. He was Continue Reading →

Our Return To The Garden

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God has an amazing plan for us after Jesus returns. Along with being in the direct presence of Jesus and the Father we will live forever in a perfect community of love with God’s followers. This is what God originally intended for humans in the Garden of Eden. He told Adam and Eve “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals” (Gen. 1:28 NLT). If Adam and Eve and their descendants had not sinned then they would have built a community of people who were completely godly. Thus, their “city” would have been a fantastically harmonious and loving community. It would have been thoroughly creative and constructive as everyone joyfully used their god-given creativity to create and build beautiful and glorious homes and machines and whatever else was needed. They would have Continue Reading →

prophecy

The Happy Marriage Of Prophecy And Discernment

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May of us have experienced disappointments with those who give prophecies. We know that Scripture gives high honor to prophecy. When someone prophesies this means they are speaking words from God. This reflects God’s desire to communicate with his children and give them encouragement and instruction (1 Cor. 14:31). God values prophecy and instructs us to “be eager to prophesy” (1 Cor. 14:39 ESV). In practice it is common to find many problems with the exercise of the gift of prophecy. The one receiving the prophecy often adds their own interpretation when they express it which damages what God is trying to say. Also, in their zeal to be supportive of prophecy many leaders do not apply the principles of discernment which leads to “prophets” giving advice about others’ futures which ends up taking people down wrong roads. When it comes to giving advice for the future or predicting specific Continue Reading →

Big brother

Our Big Brother Blazed The Way For Us

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The family of God has an unusual genesis. It has a Father like other families but it also has another member who made the family possible: a big brother. In the family of God everyone has a big brother and the big brother is Jesus. He is the “oldest” of the siblings because He is the first of the newly designed humans, the first of the new Adams. He was the first to live an ideal human life and he did this is order to blaze a new trail for the rest of us to follow. The power he had to be the first ideal human is available to us too. When we first believe we receive a new self that is like Jesus’ pure human self but it is an infant new self. God’s goal was to choose people “to become like his Son, so that his Son would Continue Reading →

close friends

Do You Desire Deeper Friendships? – Part Four

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So far in this series we have looked at several ways for developing close spiritual friends. This week we look at accountability and healing. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with accountability. We know that it is good for us but we rarely, if ever, go seeking it out. And if someone tries to hold us accountable without our asking our usual impulse is to resist it. Moreover, the idea of us holding others accountable makes us cringe because we don’t feel qualified or we fear the disturbance in our relationship. But if we want deep spiritual friendships then we will welcome accountability. In the New Testament accountability is mentioned in the form of warning each other. Colossians 3:16 instructs us to be “admonishing one another”. The word for admonish means gently warn or caution. I prefer the word warn because “admonish” is vague to many of us. Warning Continue Reading →