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God is Watching You!

God is Watching

Have you ever made the Lord a promise—a promise that with all your heart you intended to keep?

Maybe you said to Him, “Lord that’s it I’m going to quit smoking or drinking or looking at pornography.”

Or maybe you said, “Lord, things are going to be different between us, I’m going to start getting up earlier so I can spend some time with You in prayer before I start my day.”

Or “I’m going to stop watching so much T.V. and spend that time in the Word.”

Or maybe you purposed to start being more of a verbal and visible witness for the Lord at work or some other place.


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Hark the Herald Angels Sing…

 
(Originally published 11/30/11)

I don’t know about you, but the older I get the more nostalgic I become.  I think it’s because of all the changes that are taking place in our country; changes that are moving us from a spiritual nation—a nation founded by God and lived under God—to a secular nation where more and more people no longer believe in the God of the Bible which has caused many to abandon traditional values and do whatever seems right in their own eyes. Since I find myself longing for the proverbial “good old days”—a time when everything seemed simpler and clearer.

A time when peoples’ thinking wasn’t so morally confused; when everyone knew right from wrong instinctively and when speaking out against evil didn’t brand you a ‘phobe’ of any kind. A time when patriotism and the love of country was assumed and not assailed; and when everyone this time of year went around saying, “Merry Christmas” and no one even thought to be offended. Of course all of that has changed.


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Filled With The Spirit

In Ephesians 5:18 Paul admonished believers to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” as an essential element of our walk with and work for the Lord. But what exactly does it mean to be “filled with the Spirit”?

Well the Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest gives four things that come through in the Greek that will help us to understand what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

1.    “Be filled with the Spirit” is a command (imperative in the Greek) that God expects us to obey.

It’s a command that is plural in the Greek which means it applies to all Christians—not just to a select few like missionaries, pastors and evangelists.  It’s a command because we can’t begin to do the work God has called us to do without the power that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit. (Luke 24:49)


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The Greatest Event in History

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the single greatest event in the history of the world and the cornerstone of the Christian faith.
 
It is so foundational to Christianity that anyone who denies the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot be a genuine Christian.
 
Without the resurrection there is no Christian faith, no salvation and no hope for man.
 
As Paul the Apostle said in 1 Corinthians 15: “If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is useless, your faith is meaningless, we are still in our sins, those who have died believing in Christ are lost and we are of all men the most pathetic—we might as well eat, drink, and be merry for there is nothing more to life than this.”
 
However Paul went on to say,
“But now Christ is risen from the dead and is the first fruits from the grave of those who have died believing in Jesus.”
 
The resurrection is central to the Christian faith. And since the resurrection is the core truth that allows someone to become a Christian—I’d like to use the word “RISEN” as an acrostic which will help you to remember how a person becomes a Christian and what the Christian life is all about.

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Jesus Our Immanuel

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(Originally published 12/7/10)
 
One of the most famous and well known Scriptures of this time of year—I say well known because it adorns Christmas cards and Christmas songs alike, comes out of Isaiah 7:14:
 
Isaiah 7:14 (NKJV) 
“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”
 
The Contextual Setting
 
The days of this prophecy were not unlike the days we find ourselves in as a nation. These were dark and frightening times for the nations of Israel and Judah.


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Thankful

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(Originally published 11/8/11)

In a couple of weeks we will celebrate one of our greatest national holidays—Thanksgiving Day, a day that we have set aside as a nation to thank the Lord for all His goodness and blessings which He has so richly given to us.  It is well-known that the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated by our Pilgrim Fathers in 1621 to give thanks for their first winter in the New World.  Two years later William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, issued this proclamation—


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