GOD PRESERVES HIS SERVANTS

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After 52 years of ministry, skydiving 98-year-old preacher, Roy Jernigan wants people to see Jesus in his life. I can relate to Roy’s testimony. I am 86 and I know God still has more for me to do specifically to alert the church to God’s soon-coming Millennial Kingdom on this earth. Checkout http://www.millennialkingdom.net

Asked to comment on the state of the American Church today:

Jernigan quickly explained that the main driver of his faith is the Bible without the trappings of denominational restrictions.

Jernigan has certainly got this right. The denominational church is not the church Jesus established as outlined in the Book of Acts. Jesus calls us all to be disciples who make more disciples. We all like the denominational church model as it removes this essential facet of the church. It is the pastor’s responsibility to grow the church so we can get on with our lives doing what we want to do.

“I’m not a denominational man. I don’t criticize the denominations but think about this: we have all kinds of denominations — Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, you name it, and every one of them has a different doctrine,” he explained. “They can’t all be right. And so, consequently, I don’t claim a denomination. I claim to be a Christian. And as a Christian, I follow the New Testament teachings on the Apostle Paul.”

And Jernigan’s nondenominational approach to ministry aligns with the direction of the American Church today. Data from the 2020 U.S. Religion Census show that in the last 10 years, the number of American Christian adherents in nondenominational churches nearly doubled in number and surpassed America’s largest Protestant denomination, Southern Baptist, by several million adherents.

Other recent studies also show that while America remains a highly religious nation, with seven in 10 claiming affiliation with some kind of organized religion, for the first time in nearly 80 years, fewer than half now say they have formal membership in a specific house of worship. Church attendance has also continued to decline in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

While he admits that being a Christian today is much harder than it was 50 years ago when fewer distractions were competing for people’s attention, Jernigan believes that the model of many church ministries today is partly to blame for people deserting the pews.

“I’ll be honest with you, one of the biggest problems that pastors have today is trying to build a church on their own,” Jernigan told CP.

“Today, preachers have gotten themselves into such a rut by building big buildings with stained glass windows and everything. And the people have deserted them because they get tired of being bled to death [financially]. And hear the preacher say, ‘you got to give, you got to give, you got to give.’ My conviction is you don’t have to hound Christians to give. If they are saved, they love the Lord, they will give,” he said.

Jernigan also criticized preachers who treat their ministry as a business. “I think it’s the wrong approach. Commercial? You don’t commercialize God. I believe this is a gross mistake, that people, you see so much of this today, trying to commercialize and put things into a peaceful (more like bless me) type of thing rather than teaching the Bible,” he said. “I do believe if preachers would come down off the high horse, and quit preaching, what I call cotton candy messages, that’s all fluff and no substance, I believe there’d be a great difference in the world today.”

And as the church continues to compete for the attention of society today, Jernigan is worried that current social trends might lead to a point in society where Jesus is “completely rejected.”

“Today, there is much more to pull a person away than there was in my day,” he said. “It is much more difficult. And it does appear to me that as the time approaches (Jesus return to put things right), that things are going full circle to the extent that Christ … is going to be completely rejected.”

He urged Christians who left institutional churches but still want to maintain their Christian faith to keep reading the Bible and praying to God for direction.

“My heart goes out to so many people, it really does,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there that are hungry, and they’re thirsting for the Word of God, but they don’t have anyone to give it to them.” You be one of those Christians that does do what Jesus called us to do i.e. bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the lost.

NEVER TOO OLD TO GET RIGHT WITH GOD

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The video clip was first shared Sunday by Ryan Burton King, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Wood Green, London.

King said his brother, Regan Burton King — also a preacher — is the man featured in the clip.

“It has been an excellent day, but this video of my brother [Regan Burton King] baptizing a frail and elderly woman who is newly trusting in Christ, then picking her up and carrying her out of the baptismal pool, has made it,” King wrote. “Blessed be the Lord!”

The video shows King speaking to the woman before gently dunking her under the water. The pastor then hugged her and helped lift her out of the baptismal pool.

In a separate tweet of his own, Regan Burton King, the preacher in the video, said the 77-year-old woman’s name is Susan.

This previously agnostic new believer has been struggling with Parkinson’s disease, among other issues, but is “now trusting Jesus as Messiah and Lord of her life,” according to King.

DO YOU REALLY KNOW THE GOD OF THE BIBLE?

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God is eternally perfect in every way. He is the single standard by which we understand all things to be good and true.

God is immutable (unchanging over time), omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. All powerful, all knowing, and ever-present.

God’s omnipotence describes His immeasurable power. He can do anything and everything. But, what should we do with this information? Simple. We are being told to keep calm and leave everything to the ever-powerful God we serve. He is all-powerful and He is in control.

God’s omniscience should remind us of how His Will is absolute. God knows you. He knows what’s going to hurt you, makes you smile, encourages you, heals you, and makes you more like Jesus. Because you committed your life to Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, God the Father has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell your spirit. He has given you everything you need to live a Christian life under His Grace and blessings. For your part, you only need to believe in the Will of God and know the Holy Spirit will guide your every step as long as you say, Lord, not my will but your will be done today. Humans can only predict but, the Lord can leap through time and He knows what good He is going to bring you. All you need to do is rest in that knowledge. No one except your deeds can take that away from you.

God’s omnipresence or “all-present” refers to how God is everywhere. He is not a material that is confined within time and space. God controls time and space. Psalm 139 shows us that He knows what we are going to do before we even do it. Jeremiah 1:5 says that God knew us before we were even formed in the womb of our mothers. Aside from this, God already has a purpose for us before we were even born! This is possible because of God’s omnipresence. He has already seen the future while being in the past.

For Christians, because we have accepted Jesus Christ as Our Lord and Saviour we have received the special privilege of the Holy Spirit indwelling our Spirit. As Proverbs states our spirit is the lamp of the Lord. The lamp requires oil (Holy Spirit) to function as God intended man to function.

“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:27

Consider these words by Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck on the errors of a relationship-driven human-god economy. He writes, “The difference between the creator and the creatures hinges on the contrast between being and becoming” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:156).

God is “being” (eternal, unchanging, perfect, all-knowing) and we are always “becoming” something else based on our experiences.

There is a problem with Mutual Theism: “it’s a relationship, not a religion” mentality. We must not forget that when we misrepresent and misunderstand the God of scripture, we make an idol. Our sinful, finite minds are naturally opposed to the holy and exclusive. It makes us uneasy. So, we will ease our consciences and in sin, make Him more like us. Outside of biblical Christianity, almost every religion presents divinity as attainable. But there is only one God that is truly transcendent, divine, and holy. This is the God of the bible. Unlike other gods, His actions are not removed from His being. Rather, His will, His being, His essence, and His actions are eternally the same within God.

One might counter that God’s actions/responses are not connected to His being or essence. He is not becoming something else when He responds with a temporal action.  But, that draws out complications related to how Christians historically understand God’s ontology (study of God’s existence). Christians understand God to be absolute. He is self-sustaining. All wisdom and knowledge are complete and found in Him. More than that, God is the source of all knowledge. No one can know anything unless God has revealed it to them. To suggest that God can know or become something different (if even only for an instant) undermines what it means to be God. God does not change. He is not subject to mood swings; He is always God with perfect understanding, knowledge, and action in every situation.

Furthermore, we must not attempt to understand God through a lens of attributes or behavior, rather, we must understand these attributes through the lens of God. God is not made up of components – like the sum of many parts. He is not some complex mixture of love, wrath, grace, etc. He just is. He cannot become anything else because He has always been. For these reasons, we cannot separate God’s actions from His being. They’re unified; all in one. God just is and will forever be. His actions are always the perfect expressions of His being.

Most of us are just uninformed and unaware that their framework for understanding how we relate to the divine is substantially skewed. We have unknowingly adopted Theistic Mutualism (it’s a relationship, not a religion) as our theological framework.

We pray and petition because we desire other realities in our life. We want God to hear us, change His mind, and honor our requests. For reference, consider the following verses:

  • Psalm 106:23: “Therefore he said he would destroy them had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.”
  • Judges 2:18: “Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them.”
  • Genesis 6:6: “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart”

So how we do reconcile these emotionally-fueled responses from God with the fact that God is also immutable and impassable? The expressions from God we find in scripture are provided and written anthropomorphically. That is, they are written to give God human-like characteristics to help us better understand an aspect of God’s being or Law (the two can be separated). They are packaged in such a way that helps a finite being understand the behavior of an infinite one.

So, what’s so controversial? Well, the problem centers on how we understand the driving force of these responses from God. If it’s only us and prayer, then the economy of influence we have with God is not too dissimilar from that of the gods found within Greek Mythology. We possess the power to draw some alternate desired reality from God. God, the source of infinite power and knowledge, is ours to try and manipulate. Like Moses in the verse above, we act because we want to revise God’s position on a matter.

Peradventure, let’s pretend we think God to not be compassionate enough in a certain situation, but after intense prayer, fasting, and reasoning with God, He complies and divinely expresses the desired and proper compassion. Logically, this means the petitioner possesses some unique insight into the situation that God must not have. This person has enlightened God’s understanding and convinced Him that He ought to be more compassionate, given this and that. In this scenario, God is not immutable and certainly not omniscient. Instead, He is adapting and by way of outside influence, becoming a more enlightened version of Himself. Clearly, this is nonsense. God is eternally perfect in every way. He is the single standard by which we understand all things to be good and true. Yet, this is how many Christians practically carry out their relationship with God.

As an example, has there ever been a point in time when God did not hate sin? No, of course not – yet we find in scripture how God is enraged at sinful behavior. However, He didn’t start the day calmly and then become enraged once a sin was committed. No. His character and “being” has always hated that which is opposed to His righteousness. God is omniscient; He knows everything. He knew sin was going to happen. Nevertheless, scripture communicates God’s anger at sin to us in a way that is anthropomorphic and understandable. In fact, the only aspect of the human-divine “relationship”  that is subject to change is how we apply these eternal truths in our lives.

We must not forget that God created everything, even time. While God is eternal, He engages with us in the temporal. He meets us where we are. Bavinck helps us again when he explains, “He [God] remains eternal and inhabits eternity, but uses time with a view to manifesting His eternal thoughts and perfections” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:164). It is as Reformed theologian Scott Clark once stated, “The historic Reformed view is that all of God’s revelation is accommodated. That is how it must be in the nature of divine-human relations.” The story of salvation is full of examples of God making Himself known to His people. This was perfectly manifested in the incarnation.

The problematic and prevalent relationship-first model of Christianity fails to paint the correct picture of the economy between God and man. God is God and we are not. We must not project a human relationship model onto the divine; this is precisely why Evangelicals need to abandon the, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” mentality.

That being said, none of what I have said means that we can’t know God and interact with Him. We absolutely can! Jesus has made this possible. But we must pursue a relationship that is honest to His being. Christianity is a religion, and it is the only religion that offers a covenantal relationship with the only true and living God.

In closing, I recommend reading James Dolezal’s book All That is in God. He deals with this topic in much more detail and effectiveness. It’s not an easy read, but it is rich in doctrine and thought and worthy of your time.

Adapted from the article “Why Evangelicals Need to Stop Saying ‘It’s a Relationship, Not a Religion” October 15, 2018, by Jack Lee published by Patheos.

IS WORLD HISTORY BUILT ON JUBILEE CYCLES?

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When God set up His own nation Israel, He codified as law the pattern of six days and six years of labour and one of rest. It is the reason God created the cosmos in six days and rested on the seventh it was the pattern for man’s working week. The seventh day (Sabbath) was a rest day and the seventh year (Shemitah) was also a rest year. The Jubilee is built upon the Shemitah cycle (7 x 7 = 49), the year following is the Jubilee year.

The Jubilee cycle begins and ends in the 50th year on the 10th day of the 7th month. The 50th year is also the first year of the next Shemitah cycle. The Jubilee Cycle is therefore 49 years.

Can we build a reasonable biblical case for the Jubilee cycles as the prophetic backbone of the Bible? A straightforward summation of early biblical patriarchal lineages, reveals there were 41 generations which also represent 41 Jubilee cycles between Adam and Abraham and 41 from Abraham to Yeshua. Further insight is added when we consider that the book of Revelation associates the New Jerusalem with the number 144 and that the 144th Jubilee begins the 8th Millennium (new heaven and new earth). The soon coming 7th Millennium is Jesus ruling and reigning with the resurrected Saints on this earth for 1000 years.

For more information on Jubilee Cycles can I suggest you download my free Powerpoint presentation – Jubilee Cycles – Provide prophetic milestones in God’s Redemptive Plan on http://www.millennialkingdom.net – Resources.

Out of Jonathan Cahn’s presentation, I have chosen just three of the Jubilee years that demonstrate that God is in control of history and that He established Israel as His nation for His purposes.

1917 Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917): Statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

1967 Battle for Jerusalem: Jerusalem was reunified under Israeli rule as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War launched against Israel by the Arab world

2017 On December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump announced what no previous president had officially declared while in office: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. 

GOD AND THE BIBLE ARE NOW THE OPPRESSOR

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People hate being held accountable, especially when it comes to a standard that is impossible to meet in their own strength. When a holy God says your way of living is sinful, the natural flesh reaction is now to label God as an “oppressor” who needs to be removed from all aspects of civil discourse.

The natural extension of this thinking is to also attempt to silence, cancel or even prosecute those who follow God’s standard. This now includes parents who stand up for common sense and decency in our publicly funded government schools into which every form of unholy indoctrination has crept in. In fact, what used to be secretly brought in through the back doors of our public schools is now openly and proudly paraded through the front doors as policies that promote highly sexualized material as being necessary for the diverse, equitable, and inclusive materials, books and curriculum needed to “properly” educate the current generation of social justice warriors.

What happened to just teaching core academics? In America, why do pride flags now outnumber American flags in the classrooms? In one local Loudoun County, Va., elementary school, the large pride flag with an upraised black fist and phrase “Love Always Wins” is prominently displayed over the music room’s piano while the teacher proudly displayed pictures of him and his gay lover’s personal life to elementary age children.

These children are slowly becoming numb to tradition and godly, values taught by their parents at home and slowly are being indoctrinated over their 16,000 hours of government-sponsored education.

Parents standing up for traditional values and calling for a return to academics in our schools and removal of identity politics from classrooms are now seen as “dangerous” by school boards across the country and even by the Department of Justice. This is why in the Loudoun County school system, the current policy prevents a parent from knowing if their child is expressing gender confusion at school. The teacher can know. The school counselor and staff can know. The principal can know, but NOT the parent.

Parents are viewed as some sort of extremist, backwoods cult member who will harm their child if they are involved when a child crosses over into the dark world of transgenderism after being groomed by social media influencers and their peer group. Then the confused child is further abused by the missionaries of transgenderism inside the walls of our schools who do everything possible to prevent that child from being told “No” by their parent. Outside groups are even allowed to provide support and temporary housing for your gender-confused child so they don’t have to go home to you, the “oppressive” parent.

Where do parental constitutional rights end and criminal physical and mental abduction begin?

In the end, this is a fight for the ages.  A battle of worldviews. Will man be on the throne or God?

In today’s critical theory parlance, every idea, thought, person, institution, and policy must be divided into one of two classes: “oppressed” or “oppressor.” Christians are seen now as having benefitted from God’s oppressive system of rules which has to be stopped if society is to further evolve into a more “diverse, equitable, and inclusive” order. In reality, following God’s objective standard brings favor, blessing, and salvation.

In considering the “intersectionality” of our faith, is it really oppressive to be a Christian?

What if you’re a white Christian? Or Asian Christian? Are you let out of “oppressor jail” if you’re a black Christian or does your Christian faith always outweigh your melanin when it comes to your score on the oppression scale?

Those who desire nothing more than the cancellation and prosecution of free speech now have a new weapon. This weapon of language causes division found through critical theory which only tears down instead of building up, divides instead of unites, and accuses instead of forgives. This new lexicon of the religion of equity places man on the throne and views God, parents, and those with the wrong skin color as irreconcilably broken oppressors with no hope of redemption. 

Christianity is actually liberating. Of all the world’s religions, only in Christianity has the work to conquer true oppression (sin) already been done by the work of Jesus on our behalf. We were all born into oppression as part of the one-blood human race. We were truly victimized by the oppressor of our soul, Satan. Only in Christ, can oppression be truly conquered providing freedom for those oppressed and in bondage to sin. Satan is the true author of oppression. Jesus liberates and sets us free.

Post based on a report by Clint Thomas is a Loudoun County, VA father of 5 and local business owner.

KNOWING GOD

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Believers are usually pretty comfortable with revering God for his immortality, power, and perfection, and so we should be. He is the Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being. He is the Great I Am. But our connection with God will always be unfolding. If a person only focuses on the immensity of God, and on reverence for him, they will know little intimacy. If a person understands the great freedom we are promised in Christ but knows no reverence, they will be without foundation, To walk closely with God, we must be ever journeying, getting to know facet after facet of the divine nature. It is madness to think of him as less complex, less finely calibrated than ourselves.

God has sovereignly chosen to make himself vulnerable, in that he experiences difficult and negative emotions, along with great joy and delight, in response to earthly events.

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:5-7

Divine regret is a difficult concept, as it challenges our understanding of infallibility. We relate regret to either poor choices, bad luck, or lack of knowledge – ‘If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it.’ But God was fully cognizant of every one of his actions and choices, and still found himself regretting some of them. For God to feel regret, he must therefore be vulnerable to our choices. Free will must actually be free, and poor choices on our part can cause divine pain. The Lord gets upset and frustrated, just as He is pleased and delighted by us in turn. The only way I can make sense of this vulnerability is as a deliberate, sovereign choice. The Lord of All could have placed himself above such feelings, but instead, he chose a version of creation in which the choices of his children affect him.

We can see the breadth of God’s emotions at work in the life of Jesus. What do you make of the following passage?

‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’ Matthew 23:37

Compassion, for example, drove him to acts of kindness and mercy, such as healing the sick.

‘And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and He healed their sick.’” Matthew 14:14

Jesus knew ordinary, everyday emotions too, such as pleasure and friendship. There was a particular disciple he was closer to than any other, on a human level. John is referred to as ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’ on several occasions and was depicted leaning back on Jesus’ chest at the last supper to ask him a question. On the cross, Jesus charged this same disciple with looking after his mother, and his mother with looking after this disciple.

“When Jesus, therefore, saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.’” John 19:26-27

How human! How relatable! On the day of his death, he was concerned about those he was leaving behind, providing for their emotional needs by calling them, mother and son. How dear, how important, this must have been to Jesus, at that moment.

There was no time when the emotions of God were stretched like they were in the Garden of Gethsemane.

‘And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ Luke 22:41-44

At that moment Jesus was a man in torment, able to prevent his own suffering but choosing to embrace it anyway. He was desperate to escape the agony of the cross – not just the physical pain, but the spiritual horror of becoming all human brokenness, for our sake – and yet he bowed his head. This total mastery of self serves as a supreme example to us. If Jesus were not a deeply emotional person, mastery might have been easier, but being torn up inside and still submitting to God? That is staggering, to me, what about you?

Adapted from an article by Duncan Edward Pile, October 27th, 2021 “Hold Me Closer Cosmic Dancer” http://www.patheos.com

WHO WAS JESUS?

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There is only one claim that might be more radical than Jesus rising from the dead. It is that Jesus also claimed to be Holy God. Consider these words from Jesus Himself. He states that

“I and the Father are one.” John 10:30

This statement drew considerable anger from many of the Jews, as just a few verses later we read they tried to stone Him – in their eyes this was blasphemy.

Elsewhere in the book of John, Jesus declares that:

“… before Abraham was born, I am.” John 8:58

Here, Jesus is basically quoting God in the Old Testament when God declares Himself to be:

“I AM.” Exodus 3:14

I can think of nothing more radical than claiming to be God. Yet, this is what Jesus claimed and demonstrated. He was God. Correction – He is God. He is very much alive.

“I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6

Jesus, The Only Hope for Sinners

The truth about Jesus is that He is the eternal, holy, and magnificent God. He existed in eternity past before the world ever was. In Him, creation was made. He is perfectly holy, supremely righteous, and wholly just. Being just, he must also deal with sin and evil appropriately.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” Colossians 1:15-20

When sin entered our world through Adam, all men fell and death reigned. As the book of Romans says,

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (v. 3:23) and “The wages of sin is death” (v. 6:23).

Every member of the human race is fatally flawed and stained with sin. Because of this, we’re born evil and we choose evil. We rage war against the laws and morality of God. We lie, we lust, we steal, we hate, we murder, we blaspheme, we make idols, and we deny the very God who made us. All of us are deserving of judgment and eternal death for our sins.

Yet, from the beginning, God had a rescue plan. He made a promise to redeem His people from the guilt, shame, and judgment of their sins. Prophecies were made about a Messiah and in a mystery that was hidden for ages, God revealed that He is Messiah. Truly – Jesus is the Christ.

For sinners, such as you and me, the person and story of Jesus offer eternal hope. Born of a virgin and fulfilling every prophecy made about the coming Messiah, Jesus came to bring forgiveness, life, and hope. God took the form of man, lived a perfect life, and fulfilled the law completely. He was captured, beaten, tortured, denied, and executed by those He came to save. In doing so, He bore the stored wrath of the Holy God. He became the substitute and took the punishment His people deserve; the innocent died for the ungodly. After this, He rose from the dead and established His church.

You can have your sins forgiven if you repent of your sinful life and receive Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, thereby committing your life to His example and commands. Jesus’ blood spilled on the cross covers your sins and the judgment you deserve is transferred to Him. Instead of wrath, you receive life. This gospel has been preached for 2,000 years by men willing to die horrible deaths for their faith.

For those in Christ, we are credited, or imputed, with the righteousness of Jesus. Meaning, that in the eyes of God the Father, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Jesus also made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to be our counsellor, comforter, and teacher and thereby enable us to live the Christian life. Nevertheless, the effects of our sinful natures linger and will ultimately kill us in this life unless, of course, we live until the time Jesus returns to rapture, first the dead in Christ and then those who are living, prior to the wrath of God being poured out on an unrepentant world with the Trumpet and Bowl judgements of Revelation 8 (Trumpet), 16 (Bowl).

Folks, today you are faced with a binary decision. You can choose to believe and trust that Jesus is everything He said He was, or He wasn’t. In denying Him, you remain under the wrath of God and judgment waits for you. Receive Him today! Trust Him! Believe in Him! The Bible tells that “All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” There is no sin or evil you’ve committed that grace cannot cover. Forgiveness is available to all who seek it.

Seek Him while He still may be found.

adapted from an article by Jack Lee on April 11th, 2019 “Who was Jesus?” http://www.patheos.com

WHAT IS STOPPING YOU FROM SUBMITTING TO GOD?

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The process of self-emptying so that we can be filled with the Spirit of God and made into new creatures is often easier for those who are naturally wretched and miserable, as opposed to those who seem to have it “all together” like Denzel Washington.

The reliance on natural gifts can not only prevent us from coming to Christ but also hinder our daily reliance on His Holy Spirit once we have. Relying on our own powers and failing to recognize the ultimate source of those powers can stunt our relationship with our Creator and, ultimately, lead us into the first of all sins, the sin of pride.

That the Christian life is fundamentally related to the humility of the soul before God is itself revealed in the life of Christ. Paul talks of God’s “self-emptying” (kenosis):

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11

The process of self-emptying so that we can be filled with the Spirit of God and made into new creatures is often easier for those who are naturally wretched and miserable, as opposed to those who seem to have it “all together”:

Men like Denzel Washington endowed with incredible natural gifts like charisma and talent, find it harder to rely on God’s power and providence. It is so easy for them to say who needs God, I can supply all that I need. That Denzel struggled to “want [the Holy Spirit”], didn’t want to “go too deep” and wasn’t “ready to live it” is an honest account of what it is often like for those who are gifted by God to not want to acknowledge the source of those gifts, but to rely on them as their own. But, that Denzel is as outspoken a follower of Christ as he is, given his incredible circumstances, is itself a testimony to God’s grace and Denzel’s faithful response to that grace.

For C.S. Lewis, who called himself “the most reluctant convert,” it was not his looks per se, but his natural gift of intellect that prevented him from humbling himself before God. For many of us, it may be something other than looks or intellect that hinders us from coming to Christ. But, that some part of our natural gifts may be the very thing keeping us from the Giver of those gifts, is very likely the case.

What about you?

MANKIND AND CREATION’S VASTNESS

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God in His Word reveals why He created human beings. We are meant to be in a relationship with Him.

Genesis 1:27 states: “God created mankind in his own image.”

Psalms 8:1–5 says: “O Lord … What is man that You take thought of him … Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!”

John 3:16 explains God gave humans His son to redeem us out of His love for us.

The vast expanse of space

These texts show that God is human-oriented: human beings are like God, and he values us highly.

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands” Psalms 8:3-6

Note the contrast between vv. 3–4 and v. 5. Looking at the stars causes the psalmist to ask why He (God) cares for us. And yet in verse 5, He crowns us with glory and honour. The psalmist is clearly capable of meditating on his own insignificance in the light of the sky, and yet he also acknowledges God’s care for us in the way He made us.

Solomon makes a similar observation, this time concerning God dwelling in the temple he has just built.

“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! 1 Kings 8:27

Solomon prayed these words after God had manifested his special presence in the temple (1 Kings 8:10–11), so he wasn’t questioning whether God would care enough to dwell in the temple. Rather, he was marvelling that God would condescend so far and fill the temple with His glory. This is even more evident in the Incarnation, where the eternal Word of God “tabernacles among us” (John 1:14) as the human Jesus of Nazareth.

The vastness of the universe impresses on us God’s sheer immensity. Even the cosmos, as large as it is, can’t contain God! But we’re so small. Little dots on a single speck of a planet floating in some nondescript place in the vast cosmic dark. Does it make God feel immense? Of course, it does!

And yet, we are right at the centre of God’s spiritual concerns. The Incarnation proves that. But this disjunct is precisely what we’d expect of God.

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” Isaiah 57:15

God is a God of loving condescension. He voluntarily descends from His transcendent dignity to care for us “mere specks of dust”. What better way for God to create a context for that impression than to create a vast universe in which we’re alone on a tiny speck in the vast cosmic dark? He fills all things, yet concerns himself with us so much that He sends His eternal Son to become one of us to bring us into eternal communion with Him by making it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the eternal Holy Spirit to indwell our spirit.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Our spirit was always meant to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, as this verse shows, our spirit is the lamp of the Lord which needs the Holy Spirit to function as God intended.

“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” Proverbs 20:27

Extract from the article “Why did God make such a big universe?” by Shaun Doyle 19th July 2022 http://www.creation.com

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT’S ROLE IN OUR SALVATION AND IN OUR LIFE

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“The Holy Spirit is how God quickens us to new life and births us from above.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” John 3:5-7

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:11

The third person of the Trinity. All three have a role in your Salvation.

The Holy Spirit has a special role as He seals us for eternity. The Apostle Paul says,

“In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. ” Ephesians 1:13-14

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” John 14:16-17

“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 14:25-26

“But When He, the Spirit of truth, comes He will guide you into all truth” John 16:13

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about me.” John 15:26

“I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” John 16:7

It is the Holy Spirit’s role to convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgement. We cannot convert anyone unless the Holy Spirit has first convicted the person of their sin.

And when he comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.” John 16:7-11

The Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit in your life.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23

He provides the gifts of the Spirit for ministry

“For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another, various kinds of tongues, to another, the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills” 1 Corinthians 12:7-11

SUMMARY

He lives within you forever (John 14:16).

He directs your paths (Prov. 3:4-5, Romans 8:14, Acts 8:29, Acts 8:39)

He guides you into all truth (John 14:17, 16:13a).

He teaches you all things (John 14:26a).

He reveals to you things to come (John 16:13).

He reveals to you the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10).

He produces the fruit of the Spirit in your life. (Galatians 5:22-23)

He equips and empowers you for ministry. (1 Corinth. 12:7-11)

He freely gives you all things (1 Cor. 2:12).

He offers you the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).

You cannot live a Christian life without the Holy Spirit. It is impossible. Make sure you do not grieve the Holy Spirit nor quench His work in your life but follow Paul’s advice that he gave to Timothy, “fan into flame the gift of God“.

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Ephesians 4:30

“Do not quench the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19

“For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” 2 Timothy 1:6