Pentecost -- what is it really all about anyway?
The birth - death - burial - resurrection and ascension of Jesus ... was that it?
Posts from category "Chats"
Have you ever considered pearls and how they are produced? A pearl starts off as a pain in an oyster's stomach when a cruel, jagged particle of sand gets under the shell. There is piercing, tearing pain but the Creator has not been caught off guard. He has already prepared for this contingency. From within the oyster's body, a soothing balm begins to flow which coats the unrelenting intruder and eases the pain. So a pain, covered by the provision of Almighty God, becomes a pearl.
As I was mulling over Chapters 6 & 7 of Romans, the Lord gave me a parable. What was startling about this allegory was that it came so quickly.
It may have been minutes but it seemed like seconds and the whole thing was complete in my mind.
I was looking over Psalm 62 and was impressed again with the reality of GOD ALONE. The old truths which are ever-new, the good old ways, ... these are the realities which leave their footprints and mark out a path on my heart.
Was there ever a world like ours?
Do you ever feel discouraged, disheartened, weighted down?
A politician wants to remove the mention of God from all government activities.
A judge rules that possessing child pornography is legal and the right of an individual.
(This excerpt is from J.I. Packer's book, REDISCOVERING HOLINESS)
What does it mean to behave naturally? What sort of behaviour, now, is natural to the child of God? THE CHRISTIAN'S NATURE: A widespread but misleading line of teaching tells us that Christians have two natures; an old one and a new one. They must obey the latter while denying the former. Sometimes this is illustrated in terms of feeding one of your two dogs while starving the other. The misleading thing here is not the reminder that we are called to holiness and not to sin, but that the idea of "nature" is not being used as it is used both in life and in Scripture. (see, for example, Romans 2:14, Ephesians 2:3). The point is that "nature" means the whole of what we are, and the whole of what we are is expressed in the various actions and reactions that make up our life. To envisage two "natures," two distinct sets of desires, neither of which masters me till I choose to let it, is unreal and bewildering because it leaves out so much of what actually goes on inside me.
Many of us, (would I be too far off in saying most of us?) have an empty, aching abyss deep in that secret, lonely, inner place. Something we could never speak of to anyone, and maybe, having tried to bury or smother it for so long, foolishly don't even open it up to the Lord.
What praying for M. . has done for me. I feel privileged to even know M . . . . I remember telling her mother that she is everything I ever wanted in the daughter I never had.
Sept.24/95 - Sunday Evening Service --
Love the Lord with all your mind -- what does that really mean? Love is not a feeling but a choice of action. When thoughts of selfishness, self-indulgence, lust, fear, pride, resentment, self-pity and whatever else, attack the mind like an overwhelming flood, part, at least, of "loving with the mind" is:
Lord, it is my chief complaint
That my love is weak and faint;
Yet I love Thee, and adore;
Oh, for grace to love Thee more!