Our journey through the One Another statements of the New Testament takes us today to Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. In order to fully understand the original intent of this passage, we must consider the context–or the text that goes with our text. When we do this, we discover that Paul is focusing…
The church should be “a group of individuals who, despite their differences, are willing to show love for one another through putting the well-being of others first. This will always mean speaking the truth and acting on the truth, but doing so in love. It will also mean having the humility to admit when we…
God is looking for ordinary, regular people who realize that they are not able to serve God without His intervention and help. They know that they cannot succeed without His power at work in and through them. As Oswald Chambers said, “All through history God has chosen and used nobodies, because their unusual dependence on him made possible the unique display of his power and grace. He chose and used sombodies only when they renounced dependence on their natural abilities and resources.”
In the last days of his life, the Apostle Paul found himself in a dreadful situation—imprisoned and deserted by almost all of his companions. It was in these circumstances that Paul wrote to his ‘beloved’ son in the ministry, Timothy. In spite of his own depressing circumstances, Paul sought to encourage and instruct his disciple—and every disciple of Christ since—to not be fearful but to be ever-increasing in his dependence on the Holy Spirit of God in every aspect of his life.
When faced with our own mortality, the things that make up this world become surprisingly insignificant
“Adversity strips away all of our half hearted commitments and beliefs, exposing what we honestly want to hold onto.”
What are you holding onto, that’s holding you back?
After spending seven weeks looking at the first three chapters of the Book of Judges, we will be studying all of chapters 4 and 5 this evening. These chapters are unique in that chapter 4 is an historical accounting of the story of Deborah, Barak and Jael; while chapter 5 relates the events through the eyes of a poet or song writer, which provides us with a greater understanding of the story as a whole. Chapter 4 provides us with some understanding of the passage, but it is not until chapter 5 that we are able to see the hand of God continually at work to bring about His plan and His purposes.
Lecture 6 – Have you ever told your child to do something and then—an hour later when you ask if it is completed—your child tells you, “I forgot.” Do you remember the level of frustration you felt as a result? If you have ever experienced that, then you have seen a glimpse of what God must have felt as He was dealing with His children—the Israelites! What does it mean to say that Israel forgot the Lord? To say that the Israelites ‘forgot’ God is to say that they no longer were controlled by what they knew. Even though they knew who God was and what he wanted, those things were not real to them.
Lecture 5 – We want to take some time examining God’s point of view of man’s predisposition toward idolatry. Mankind was created with the need to worship something. When we are not allowing God and His Word to guide us in this life, then we are worshiping other gods. In essence, we are prostituting ourselves.
Last week, we considered God’s general revelation. We looked at some aspects of creation and determined that creation demands a Creator. So as we look once again at Psalm 19 this morning, I want us to focus specifically on the role of God’s special revelation in our worship. And as we study this psalm, I want us to notice that worship is not just a physical activity but also a spiritual attitude and cleansing.