Month: April 2010

Categories
Bible Study

A Look At Love Part 14

Greetings Again!

I just have to tell you all, a very compelling archeological situation is stirring up again… What would you think to learn Noah’s ark is for real and has been found?

Visit: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2949640/Noahs-Ark-found-in-Turkey.html

I have debated anti-Christians many times, and not a few of them lambasted the “Noah’s Ark Fairy Tale”.

I actually kept an online debate I engaged in back in 2001…. Here’s a snippet. My handle is “callmeguilty”.

fred_flinstonensis: Now then
fred_flinstonensis: How did the Kiwi bird get down from Mt. Ararat and get to New Zealand
fred_flinstonensis: How could they have read the [expletive] road map?

callmeguilty: fred: how do you explain everything?
callmeguilty: brb…. phone

fred_flinstonensis: callmeguilty It is easy to torpedo Noah’s Ark
fred_flinstonensis: The ark would have been a deathtrap since it would never have floated
fred_flinstonensis: ANd how many termites were there on Noah’s Ark of Gopherwood?

GremlinDotNet: callmeguilty is actually suggesting that Noah’s Ark was a true story?

fred_flinstonensis: How did God preserve the precious viruses and bacteria?  Were Noah and his family infested with lice crabs, gonnerhea, warts, the flu, measles etc while they were shoveling [expletive] in the ark for 300 days?

callmeguilty: fred fred fred….. so many questions

fred_flinstonensis: callmeguilty not questions: problems

callmeguilty: fred: shall we PM each other? (PM means Private Message)

fred_flinstonensis: no PMs

callmeguilty: fred:   why not?

fred_flinstonensis: except hot girl;s

callmeguilty: fred: ha ha

fred_flinstonensis: can you imagine all of those blind cave crickets and all of the dinosaurs and all of the kiwi bird stumbling down the side of Mt/ Ararat and finding their way to different parts of the world without leaving a trace of [sic] there having been there?

fred_flinstonensis: if the flood actually happened how come 170 species of cichlid fishes settled out of the biblical brine into Lake Victoria – but not into any other lake in the world, including lakes only several miles from Lake Victoria?

callmeguilty: fred: natural selection

And so it went… Anyhow, I wonder how people like fred_flinstonesis (as in Genesis) would take the news. 😉

Now, lemme get to this week’s message on love. Our verse for the next month starts out like this…

1st Corinthians 13:7a
Love… bears all things…

You know something? Understanding this can be easy…

Just think of God. Then think of your years of rejecting God while indulging in sin. Then came the day you realized just how wicked you are, and yet God loved you all the while. And if you repented and yielded your everything to Him as your Lord in faith, He forgave you all of it and lovingly covered your sins with the blood of His own Son.

Oh what magnificent mercy and grace with lovingkindness!

Looking at your salvation this way, can you see how Love… bears all things?

God was bearing all those transgressions you committed against Him, and yet He still loved you and forgave you, if indeed you’re a child of His.

With our transformation from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light, we have the capacity to love as Christ loved us.

Likewise, we should be able to bear much more than we have in past times, right! Consider your trials and temptations? Have you been bearing the sins of those around you? If not, then begin to see those offenses as opportunities to demonstrate love in forgiveness.  Has your faith been exercised by resisting/ fleeing temptations? The love shed abroad in you makes you able!

Take the Apostle John’s words for it…

1st John 4:11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Nothing has to be unbearable to a Christ-follower…

**Comments/ questions/ testimonies/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim

Categories
Bible Study

A Look at Love Part 13

Good Morning All,

Gee, it seems to me that it has been a while since I wrote last time. Yet, it has only been a week. I think I feel this way because the past seven days have been busy for me and my family. How about you? Are you all doing a bunch of stuff?

When a lot of things are going on, I often think of this…

Romans 8:28
… all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Notice “all things”? And notice “the called”? These are the sheep who hear their Master’s call…

 John 10:27
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

Well, (in segue fashion) as a true believing sheep feels most comfortable and secure in the Great Shepherd’s sheepfold, likewise this next trait of true love remains most content in its Source’s arms (as it were)…

1st Corinthians 13:6
Love… does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

Maybe it is too simplistic to think this way, but I like to think of “rejoice” as experiencing joy over and over again. I mean, think of “re”… as in the words “replay, regain, rewrite, repeat, reappear, restore…” Thus, love experiences joy over and over again in the truth.

Contrastingly, love does not experience joy in iniquity. Iniquity is an older word meaning all manner of sin and unrighteousness. A lie, which is not the truth, falls into the category of iniquity. You know as well as I do that lies are not what can lead to feelings of joy, but when the truth shines forth 😉 Think of how happy that man is who has been released from jail after some DNA test exonerated him! Yippee!

Or better yet, think of how you felt when you finally comprehended God’s great love for you J

So this matter of the truth is loaded huh? Can you see how love ties into the truth? Anything less than the truth works against love, because doubt is present. But love without a doubt is a cause for joy!

The apostle John helps conclude our thoughts…

3rd John verse 4:
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.

**Comments/ questions/ testimonies/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim

Categories
Bible Study

A Look At Love Part 12

Hi Everyone!

Wonderful Spring is upon us, yippee! How can people look around at the teeming life everywhere and not comprehend that it is indeed by design and not by accident?! Throw off that public school naturalistic indoctrination and embrace the divine truth of Genesis 1:1 😉

This week I’d like to summarize the past few weeks we covered verse 5… here it is altogether…

1st Corinthians 13:5
Love… does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

Does any of this come naturally to us? To answer that question, look at toddlers.

They behave rudely, they want what they want when they want it, any little thing that is disagreeable to them is a major issue, and they certainly won’t freely admit to sneaking the chocolate candy bar into their room, to indulge in it when no one is looking. Ha!

Am I right or am I right?

 Say these toddlers grow up with little good influences…

When they drive, do they slow down to let people merge in front of them?

When they shop, do they make a bee-line to the shoe section to purchase awesome shoes for Grandma?

When they are screamed at by their spouse, do they loving smile in return and say, “There there, it’ll be ok…”?

When they surf the Internet late at night, are they reading the online version of 101 Ways to Love Your Spouse?

Love… does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

See now this quality of love is of a higher order.

With fallen people all around, sinful attitudes dominant in the fabric of our culture, and many other things like these, the natural progression is toward a self-centeredness that stifles love. But the love given by the Holy Spirit does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

 Do you need to forsake that toddler within you? Let that old nature die. And let Christ give you new life. Only then will true love towards God and others be possible.

**Comments/ questions/ testimonies/ objections most encouraged!

Dear Lord, thank you for this time to consider Your word and Your ways. May our thoughts, words, and deeds bring You glory… and glory to You alone. –Amen

Peace,
Jim

Categories
Of the Redeemed Sanctification

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength

Joy is such a wonderful thing… a precious thing to maintain once you have been blessed with it. Oh how my heart leaps for the Joy of the Lord!

Listen to this… Over the past few days, I have studied into one of my private sins, the sin of discontent. Why? This sin has dogged me time and again all my life. And since my conversion, my discontent centered around God’s apparent slowness in the things I would be glad for Him to do.

I knew this was an area of my life that I was reserving for myself, and not giving it over to the Lord. I was compelled to deal with it. This I knew and yet didn’t abide by it: Who am I that I should complain to my Maker? Can a pot say anything to the Potter?

John MacArthur’s sermon on complaining (that I listened to the past couple of days) brought me face to face with Lamentations 3:39- Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?

My pride was the culprit again, doh!

And so, with the working out of my salvation, with prayer and effort, I drew close to God and He drew close to me. And anytime you draw close to God with a clear conscience, you enter into His lovingkindness, which is most certainly abounding in joy. Consequently, I was again blessed with joy!

Now watch this…

Just this morning, I read Oswald Chambers’ devotion for April 14th… discussing the sin of complaining! (See how God orders all our circumstances!) Oswald cited a verse that hit me like a flash of light…

Nehemiah 8:10b
… the joy of the Lord is your strength. 

Yes! That’s it!

Think this through with me:

  1. When I humble myself and yield to the Lord, I am then dependent and “weak”.
  2. This very manner of spirit I am in puts me into the right relationship with Almighty God.
  3. Being intimate with God, I sense His lovingkindness.
  4. With experiencing His lovingkindness, I become blessed with His joy.

Now this joy transcends all manner of circumstances, good and bad. And discontent never becomes even a momentary thought.

This joy sustains me in any trial. It all makes perfect sense.

The Lord helped me understand that His joy really is my strength! Seeing this clearly also causes me to see that my prayers for effective Christian living are being answered!

This is almost too much to comprehend 🙂

Praise be to God!
Jim

Categories
Bible Study

A Question about Blasphemy…

Hi Everyone!

Yippee, I received a question! By the way, starting now, if and when I receive a question, I will simply state the question and not also who asked the question. I know sometimes the questioner is known, but nevertheless, I won’t restate that person’s name in my response… I hope this new policy will encourage more people to ask questions.

Okay, let’s get to it… The question is:

What does it mean to blaspheme?

To find the answer, let’s first look at the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew and Greek) to learn about the word “Blaspheme”.

Hebrew “Blaspheme” is the verb word “gadaph” which means “to revile”. Also: the verb word “na’ats” which means “to spurn and to despise”. And also the verb word “naqab” which means “to pierce and to curse”.

Greek “Blaspheme” is the verb word “blasphēmeō” which means “to speak reproachfully, to revile, to speak evil of, to rail”

Now let’s look at our English: “to speak of or address with irreverence”.

So with these meanings, let’s put it all together…

To blaspheme is to speak evil of something that is really holy. To blaspheme is to attribute anything less than holy to what it perfectly holy.

In the context of Scripture and Christian considerations, to blaspheme is to speak, attribute, and/ or address (with conscious understanding) anything about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as anything less than what they truly are.

A great example of blasphemy comes from the Scribes and Pharisees…

Luke 11:15
But some of them said, “He (Jesus) casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons.”

Notice that they attributed the power, the graciousness, and the compassion of God as coming from Satan. Wow! This is speaking evil of someone who is perfectly holy.

The Scribes and Pharisees knew full-well what blasphemy was…

John 10:33
The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy ; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”

Ironically, they were correct in saying a sinful man claiming to be holy God is blasphemy, but Jesus was no mere man, was He? Jesus was really God!

I conclude with this thought… to speak evil of the divine is blasphemy, but how does one say those words without first believing it in their minds?

I believe as adultery can be committed in the heart, so can blasphemy. The spoken word is merely audible thoughts… So if someone blasphemes, it means their thinking is evil.

Hmmmm! What do you think?

Peace,
Jim