Category Archives: teaching

Challenge

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I present a challenge to all.  It doesn’t matter how you perceive Christ.  Come and convince me that anything other then the full acceptance of His Gospel is truth.

Invited is the scholar.  Welcome is the agnostic.  The atheists already know they have been invited openly.  Invitation is extended to the religious.   Let the drunkard try to compel me this way is better.  Come and speak to me about finance, and how money is the end of all good things.  Let the violent receive the best of House seats.  Let the timid display the grandiose crown of their fear. 

Regardless who you are, come and convince me. 

Christ Jesus is king of heaven and earth.  By His merciful grace I am his servant.  It will not be me you challenge.  It will be the living God in me.

Let us all either “Put up or shut up”.

Why am I making this challenge, and doesn’t it seem rather absurdly stupid?  Yeah, it does.

I’m making this challenge because I am sick of watching the world decay all about me.  I am sick of watching Christian cower,  all the while the Living God promises strength.

By the looks of things around me, I surmise one of us is a liar.  Either it is Man or it is God in Christ.  You know the summation of that.

At the outset, I will admit that I know nothing about Islam, Buddhism, and whatever other religion you want to throw on the table.  All I know about them is that they are false.  I will speak of the gospel in Christ. 

Required materials: Pack a lunch.

Lordship Salvation

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I can’t afford a lengthy article, I don’t have the time nor the stamina.  But I just stumbled across the phrase “lordship salvation”.

I must be old.  I look at the possibility of a new debate and find myself too tired to care.

The gospel remains as it is.  The Holy Spirit Guides any who will humble themselves before God.  How much they are guided and to what they are guided depends on their willingness to obey.

I see the debate.  I understand the importance of the issues.  But I also see the many debates that consumed Christianity from the beginning until now.  And no number will surface as to how many souls died while the Christian Church debated among itself the proper words and terminology that should be used in following Christ.

Not a single gesture or word from me will stem the tide of confusion.  And this reality causes me a vapor of fear. 

Isn’t the more important question to do with the power of the Holy Spirit to save?  I fear many have leaned back into the power of men.  “If we don’t use just the right words, no one will ever be saved again!”  (that of course is tongue in cheek)

Maybe such arguments are from God, I can’t say for sure.  But I can know this for sure, I’m not about to involve myself in another argument over semantics.

God Himself saved me in Christ.  It will be God Himself in Christ who finishes salvation on that great day.  And since I am an old man, that day comes rather quickly for me.  And it causes me to take note that this bevy of arguments will continue long after my flesh cannot speak.

The gospel remains powerful forever.  The Spirit of God is on daunted by the confusion of men.  And regardless whether Christian’s attention is toward the lost or not, God is saving souls!

To all you wonderful scholars, forgive my apathy.

By His Grace

The Darkness of Perversity

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25 “To the holy, you show your gracious love,
to the upright, you show yourself upright;
26 to the pure, you show yourself pure,
and to the morally corrupt, you appear to be perverse.” ( Psalm 18, ISV)

The mind and imagination of Man is kept to the limits of the place he lives.  If all he sees is death and corruption, that is all he is capable of perceiving.  Men may call another man holy, but they give that title to the one who achieves the best of Man’s imagination.

True holiness and purity must come from God.  Man is not capable of achieving that level of cleanliness on his own.  And to add to Man’s difficulty, pride stands at the door.  Because of pride, no man is able to receive this testimony from another man.  It is required that God bless the receiver with understanding.

Do not be amazed when so many reject the Gospel.  They cannot receive it unless they humble themselves before the Living God’s Christ.  If the hearer retains his pride, the Gospel will sound perverse.  But if the man has a willing heart, God will confirm the noise to be true.

Keep The Faith and be faithful; let God be who he is.  The only thing God requires of us is that we are not ashamed or fearful to bring the Message to our fellow brothers of flesh.

I met a man who could not overcome sexual immorality.  I told him that victory over such a sin will not come to him except that God gives it.

A year or two later he complained that he was still embroiled in immorality.  He said he had asked God to take it away, but it was still an active part of his life.

I tried to reason with him, that salvation is a mutual work.  God may well grant freedom.  The question is: does the man have the will to retain it?  In the end, the man admitted that Christ Jesus must be a liar.

Consider the verses above.  God’s Holy Word is true.  It is we who are liars.

By His Grace

Paleness

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Christian-Cross-Coloring-PagesThe mother of a little girl sat her child at the kitchen table.  Mom placed a drawing of a cross on a hill with a shash before the child to color.  Then mommy went about preparing dinner.

The child knew the color of wood.  She knew the color of grass.  She knew to shade the rocks with gray, and the sky with blue.  But when it came to the shash, the little one was perplexed.

“What is the color of the cloth?”  The tiny one asked.  Mother responded with the wisdom from God.  “Let God tell you what color to use honey.”

Tiny fingers reached for the box.  With the pure faith of a child she drew out the proper one.  And with all the care she had she shaded the cloth.

“It’s done.”  The precious one said.  But when mom came over to see, understanding reached deep into her soul.  God spoke to Mommy with clarity.  The color the child had chosen was the palest pink in the box.

As we are, so we teach.  Does God see?  Yes he does.

Do we worship in the true Gospel?  Or is our version so watered down that the very blood of Christ is but a pale pink?

Ownership

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I own nothing, because I am nothing.

God is All.  In the terms of man, God owns all things, and is All things.  From the vacuum of space to the qualities of the tiniest diamond.  God owns, and is, all things.

Righteousness is, because righteousness sustains.

A man may drop his pen.  Therefore he is not righteous.  Righteousness sustains perfection.  This is Jesus, the Christ of God.

I may know certain righteous things.  But they only belong to me because I perceived them in a moment of my life.  Yet, memory fails me to remember them with perfect consistency.

Not one scale of skin belongs to me.  How can the Righteousness of God be mine?  No, All things belong to God.

Sin is “Not”.

God is perfect, and sustaining in all His Holy ways.  Sin is destruction of perfection.  Yet this too does not belong to me.  For all I have done is destroy the things of God.  I have not sustained, even my sins.

Wickedness is “Not”.

I cannot even be considered to be fully wicked.  For every man stumbles across a righteous act from time to time.  Even a drunken man can make a few steps toward his bed before he staggers into the wall.

I have “righteous” knowledge within me.  But where did I get it?  And considering my faulty mind to remember, how is that knowledge sustained?  Personally, I can trace the beginning of understanding of what is good and Holy to the reading of Proverbs.  But from where was every single word in the Proverbs of the Bible before it was written down?  They were in the Holy Mind of the Living God.

Summation:

We are nothing.  Jesus is All.  He is the very Living Word of the Sovereign God.  In all He does, he is perfection, for He sustains All.  As the Holy Father thinks, so the Christ does.

Where is pride?  Where is accomplishment?  Where is “a sustaining” among men?  For failure accompanies all our moments.

I do not own the past, for I cannot undo or add to anything I’ve been.  I do not own the very next split second, for I live in a constant state of surprise.  Yet Jesus is the “Same, yesterday, today, and forever”.

From mercy to murder, man is “Nothing”.  For God owns Eternal Mercy, as well as the soul of the one murdered.

All things belong to God, for God is All.  As it is with the Living God, so it is with the Living Word of God; Jesus.

The Living Light Switch

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Curiosity has touched me.  I tried to hide among the bushes, but he found me out none the less.  I thought I could rely on understanding.  But understanding is like a loosely built fence, which through the cracks between,  I can receive a glimpse of heaven.  And it is while I stand along that fence, in the shadow of obscurity, that curiosity comes to greet me.

I know the answer to the question, but that there should even be a question marvels me.  The question covers three topics.  By necessity, I can’t figure out how to make it short.  But the answer is supported by the legs of the three topics.  At the top of the “Table of answer”, I lay my conclusion.

Leg 1. Why is constant and enduring self-discipline necessary for the things of God?

Leg 2. Why must man be encouraged, and even sometimes forced, to pray?

Leg 3. To where do the words of the Bible disappear after we have read them?

Human beings are so amazingly capable of learning, doing and retaining.  The volume of technology is proof of this.  There are those who have mastered virtually the complete volume of Technology ( Make no mistake, the word volume is misleading.  How many books are written on various subjects by various masters of their own trade?).  And the list of those who aspire to join them in this accomplishment is very long. 

Self discipline, zeal, and retention, do not lack among men.  What I find mysterious is the lack of understanding of those three “legs” in the things of God.

I know there is a distinction between what is flesh and what is Spirit.  But even a man who contains the Holy Spirit of God finds himself being dragged back to the flesh from time to time.  Today he remembers and does.  Tomorrow he forgets and stumbles.

Obviously, dedication to God’s things is not accomplished by a momentary decision; as if one flips the switch in the room and the light comes on.  Now he can go about the room and do as he pleases, forgetting the switch.  No, it is more like the man must rise from his chair to switch it on again.  For the switch tends to move down to the off position, as if it were a being in itself. (Please don’t become paranoid, and find yourself watching the switch.  It’s just an analogy.)

The answer to this mystery, is that God has made these things so that he may test the fullness of a man’s heart.  Laziness in the things of God is not an option.  It requires a constant straining toward the things of heaven.  Relax, and you will surely suffer loss.

A man may study technology, then take a vacation without loss.  But the man of God who does this, will find himself horribly lacking.  The information of God does not arrive without direct connection to the Spirit of God.  And it cannot be reliably retained by the flesh.  And dissipates rather quickly with non-use.  But where does it go?

I have found the Lord Jesus to be incredibly humble.  He does not force himself on anyone.  Neither does he help us unless we ask.  Agreed, there are circumstances beyond our knowledge in which he must help us.  Rest assured, he does and is.  But the volume of what is Holy belongs to him.  If by derilection, we push him away, the things that are Holy go with him.  That my friend, is where the words of the Bible go.

I am warned afresh.  Yet in this I also find a great promise.  The Lord has promised us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.  And he has taught us, “Without me you can do nothing”.  But I am struck by the reality of his promises as they play out in our daily life.

This is not hidden knowledge.  It is not only available in the Bible, but all his people testify of these things everyday.  Perhaps what is more amazing, is that there are still Church going folk who do not know these things.  For I perceive how often the Pastor must encourage the flock to read the Bible, to pray, and to do the things of Christ.

Indeed, the mystery of godliness is great!

By His Grace