Category: Level: Intermediate

heaven, on earth, sun

Do We Have Our Heavenly Blessings Now? Ephesians 1:3-14

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Does it seem mysterious to you to say that we have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”? (Eph. 1:3) ESV. This idea has seemed very abstract and fuzzy to me, especially the part about the blessings being in heavenly places. Why does it say the blessings are in heavenly places instead of in our hearts? And if the blessings are in heavenly places and we are living on earth does that mean we are separated from our blessings somehow? Do we have to wait until the next life until we have them? As we look at Ephesians 1:3-14 we can see that Paul lists the heavenly  blessings he refers to in verse 3. If we look at these blessings perhaps we can answer some of our questions.  Verse 4: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world He chose us to be holy and blameless before Continue Reading →

spiritual life questionnaire clipboard writing

How To Discover Someone’s Spiritual Condition

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Would you like to know the spiritual condition of the people you help? Or examine your own spiritual condition? We have created a simple form for that which you can download here! (It will remain available on our website.) We call it the Spiritual Life Questionnaire. We find that this simple assessment tool is very helpful in quickly discovering where someone is spiritually. It also makes it easy to cover many different topics quickly. The Spiritual Life Questionnaire doesn’t rate someone’s spiritual life but asks the important questions for examining one’s own spiritual condition. It is up to the individual to decide how to proceed based on how they answered the questions. People will often be more open when answering written questions than when talking face to face. Sometimes there is something they have been wanting to say and they are willing to say it on paper. More importantly, an Continue Reading →

racism and Jesus

Jesus, Racism and President Trump – Issues From Charlottesville – Part 2

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Last week (see Part 1 here) we looked at problems with President Trump’s comments about the Charlottesville demonstrations. We explained why his comments about the racists were disappointing. This week we look at responding to President Trump and what we say to others. In spite of Trump’s character issues, some Christians supported his nomination, though most Christians supported other candidates. (In the general election Christians didn’t have much choice – Trump’s opponent was not concerned about declining religious freedom so what could Christians do?). But why would a Christian who cared about the virtue of America vote to nominate someone who lacked virtue? How could someone without character bring character back to America? His lack of character includes owning casinos, starting a strip club, his multiple marriages, justifying looking into a room of beauty contestants who were dressing, sexualization of women, habitual disrespectful comments, habitual glory-seeking, boastfulness, habitual distortion of Continue Reading →

listening, contemplation

God Wants To Bless You In Receptive Prayer

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I’ve read that in conversations we should find ourselves listening as much as talking. Of course, this just makes sense – it would be selfish if we were in the habit of listening 30% of the time and talking 70% of the time. But does this apply to our conversations (i. e. prayer) with God? Sure. God wants to do good things for us. He wants to speak his words in his way. He wants to continuously transform us into the image of Christ. So wouldn’t God want us to spend time listening for him, or at least being in a receptive mode so we could receive anything he might want to do? That’s why the image for this post is someone listening to headphones: they are in receptive, listening mode. It is common to think of prayer time as a time when we talk the whole time. We thank Continue Reading →

candy spiritual sweet tooth

Do You Have A Spiritual Sweet Tooth?

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We all love to feel the presence of God. We love times when we feel his love or joy welling up inside us. We feel free and light or just tremendous peace. But what about the rest of the time when we don’t feel God’s presence or power? Do we find ourselves making every effort to reclaim the spiritual sweetness we had? Seeking spiritual sweetness is okay to an extent. God wants us to feel good and He wants us to feel joy and peace. He wants to be with us as much as we want to be with Him. But there is some things that are more important than spiritual sweetness in the Christian life. Two come to mind. First, submission to God’s will. If we truly want to be in Christ then we should find ourselves seeking God’s will more than seeking spiritual sweetness. God may not want Continue Reading →