Home » Posts tagged 'Christian' (Page 65)
Tag Archives: Christian
… AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO SIN AGAINST US
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 30, 2019 – I listen to a lot of sermons in my job. I read a lot of blogs. And almost without exception, the main message I hear coming from the pulpit today – whether spoken or written – is PROSPERITY. Many Christian teachers and preachers are working overtime to get us to see God as the eternal ATM of blessings and our professed belief in Jesus as the security PIN to access those blessings.
But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t just stumble through life, treating people like crap, and then show up in church on Sunday with your hands out, expecting God to fill them with goodies. (more…)
GONE FISHIN’: CATCHING PEOPLE FOR GOD’S KINGDOM
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 29, 2019 –When Jesus compared “catching” people to catching fish, he was referring to using a net rather than a hook.
Net fishing is completely different than hook-and-line fishing. With net fishing, you can catch many fish at the same time, whereas with hook-and-line fishing, you catch only one at a time. Net fishing is also normally done in deep waters, and from a boat.
But both styles of fishing require the fisher to be astute: You don’t just rush down to the water and wildly cast your net or hook at random; you need to fish at the right time and in the right place and with the right equipment, and you need to be PATIENT. (more…)
OFF-GRID CHRISTIANITY
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 28, 2019 – Since being born-again 20 years ago, I have hesitated at times to call myself a “Christian” – not because I don’t love God and follow Jesus and don’t want to say so openly, but because I don’t identify with most people who call themselves Christian. The name has been so abused and misused and misapplied and watered down that it has lost its original meaning, morphing into the dreaded parody known as “churchianity”. (more…)
PRAY WITHOUT CEASING
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 28, 2019 – When I was first born-again 20 years ago, I remember reading the phrase “pray without ceasing” in one of Paul’s letters and wondering how someone could possibly do that. At the time, prayer for me (because I was a Catholic) meant getting down on my knees and repeating vain repetitions that I either memorized, like the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary”, or read straight from a prayer book or prayer card, like a script. I could not understand how people would be able to be down on their knees reciting the Our Father or Hail Mary 24/7 and still carry out their daily duties, but I gave it my best shot. I bought rosary beads, chaplets, and any other prayer beads I could find at the Catholic store and started the daily recitations on my knees. Morning, noon and night, at pre-set times, you could find me in my room, mumbling vain repetitions and counting out beads as eagerly as Matthew had counted coins at his tax collector job before being sprung by Jesus. (more…)
TOP TEN (PLUS ONE) TRAITS OF NEWLY BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 27, 2019 – I don’t follow celebrity news, but sometimes celebrity news follows me when I log onto my various email accounts. Because of my Internet searches for “abornagainbeliever” (my website with WordPress), I am bombarded with “recommended for you” suggestions that include “born again”. Recently, as some of you might know, some high-profile celebrities have claimed to have become born-again Christians or to have had a “spiritual experience” that they attribute to God. Whether or not these experiences are genuine spiritual rebirths is for God to know. However, for your edification, and with a nod to celebrity cultural norms, I’ve compiled a “Top 10″ (plus 1) list of the main characteristics of a newly born-again follower of Jesus. You can compare these characteristics against the celebrity reports and draw your own conclusions. (more…)
LOVE and HELL
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 25, 2019
LOVE
People want to love and be loved.
People also want to love and be loved by God.
We are hardwired to love and be loved, whether we believe in God or not, just as we are hardwired to love and be loved by God, whether we believe in him or not.
We are hardwired to love and be loved, and we are hardwired to love God and be loved by him.
Show me someone who claims he or she doesn’t want to love or be loved, and I’ll show you a liar.
**********
Fathers report an instantaneous surge of love for their children when they hold them in their arms for the first time. They say they “fell in love” with the child. That indescribable joy, packaged as the love of a parent for a child, is engendered by God so that children will know unconditional love, however imperfect. Mothers typically develop that love early in their pregnancy so it is already full-blown by the time the child arrives. A parents’ love is a stand-in for God’s love until the children are old enough to decide whether or not they want to receive God’s love and love him in return.
When we come to God as a follower of Jesus, our love for God starts to grow. That part of us that is hard-wired to love God is sparked into life. Sometimes it explodes as a full-blown love, depending on the circumstances, but mostly it grows over time the more we get to know and depend on God: our love for God and our faith in God grow together. (more…)
THE KINDNESS OF A STRANGER
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 25, 2019 – Even as we do our best to follow Jesus, our walk with God is not always without problems.
Sometimes we make mistakes.
Sometimes we make HUGE mistakes and suffer for them.
I made one of those mistakes about 15 years ago. I didn’t turn my back on God, but I did drift from him. I was tempted, I fell, and I suffered accordingly. Part of that suffering was a stint of homelessness. It happened in summer and early fall, so for a time I fooled myself into believing that I was “camping”, but I was definitely homeless. I was also unemployed, so I was penniless on top of being homeless on top of being slightly estranged from God. This was not a good place for a born-again believer to be, but there I was. (more…)
FEAR NOT! A Hallowe’en reminder
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 20, 2019 – We know, because God tells us in his Word, that people – not places – are haunted.
Again – there are no haunted places, just haunted people (and some haunted animals).
Jesus never cast a demon out of any place. He did cast demons out of many people and once cast demons out of a person and into a herd of pigs, but there are no instances of Jesus casting out demons from a place or sending demons into a house or the wilderness or any other Earthly habitation.
If places could be haunted, don’t you think Jesus would have gone there to cast out a few demons, and don’t you think this would have been recorded in scripture? (more…)
PUTTING THE HAPPINESS CART BEFORE THE DOING-GOD’S-WILL HORSE
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 19, 2019 – No other age in Western history has been as obsessed with finding happiness as our current one.
And is it just a coincidence that no other age in Western history has been as estranged from God as our current one?
Most people today (including Christians) believe that happiness is a human right, and so they spend all of their time and money pursuing things they think will make them happy.
But if that to-do list of things doesn’t include “doing God’s will”, their efforts will be in vain. They’ll just be putting the happiness cart before the doing-God’s-will horse, which will get them nowhere fast. (more…)
ONE DAY CLOSER TO HEAVEN
ROCKINGHAM, Nova Scotia, October 17, 2019 – Every morning I wake up, I’m ONE DAY CLOSER TO HEAVEN.
Every step I take, I’m ONE STEP CLOSER TO HEAVEN.
Every breath I take, I’m ONE BREATH CLOSER TO HEAVEN.
With every heartbeat, I’m ONE BEAT CLOSER TO HEAVEN.
We all have a finite number of days, steps, breaths and heartbeats.
We don’t know how many we’ll get in total, but God does, just as he knows how many hairs are on our head.
We don’t need to know how many more days have been allotted us (or how many hairs are on our head); all we need to know is that every day we wake up, we’re one day closer to Heaven, as long as we stay the course that Jesus showed us. (more…)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 