Category: <span>Law – Grace</span>

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 1 Corinthians 15:55-56 Have you ever begged God for His true heart concerning death and dying? I have, along with many who have lost beloved family and friends to death. I discovered something profound. ” 1 Corinthians 15:25 speaks loudly. “Then comes the end, when He (Jesus), shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under his feet.” “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death!” Death is an enemy to God. to be destroyed. Indeed it has been destroyed. 2 Timothy 1:10 gives us  “… our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” Wait a minute.…

When life is not fair:  then I must leave the “fair/unfair” plane of existence. I must heighten my meager “fairness” concept to find God’s Spirit of life. I must accept my day’s wage of a penny, and realize that all get the same, “grace.” Kristen Butler said this “Sometimes you just need to talk to a four year old and an 84 year old to understand life again. powerofpositivity “If life is unfair with everyone, doesn’t that make life fair?” —  Magaola Friends, accepting the unfairness of life — does that help us? I think rather that it breeds pessimism. No, our Father instead has asked us to climb into His wisdom and insight — to share with Him the deep meaning of the universe He created, and also later redeemed. The point of unfairness lies in our tainted, finite, partially blinded perspective — not in some seeming oversight of God. God…

Let’s move from grace to graciousness. 1Peter 1:13 teaches, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Lets look closer: Wherefore . “Because of  ‘the glorious free grace opened for Gentiles and Jews in Christ.’” Girding up. “…vivid metaphor for habit of the Orientals, who quickly gathered up their loose robes with a girdle when in a hurry or starting on a journey.” The loins, “Old word for the part of the body where the girdle was worn. A metaphor. “The believer is to have his mind (mental powers) collected and always ready for Christ’s coming. “Gather in the strength of your spirit.”  A.T Robertson Mind, “Old word for the faculty of understanding, of seeing through a thing.” A.T. Robertson Be sober. “spiritual self-restraint, lest one be…

Let’s move from grace to graciousness. 1Peter 1:13 teaches, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Lets look closer: Wherefore . “Because of  ‘the glorious free grace opened for Gentiles and Jews in Christ.’” Girding up. “…vivid metaphor for habit of the Orientals, who quickly gathered up their loose robes with a girdle when in a hurry or starting on a journey.” The loins, “Old word for the part of the body where the girdle was worn. A metaphor. “The believer is to have his mind (mental powers) collected and always ready for Christ’s coming. “Gather in the strength of your spirit.”  A.T Robertson Mind, “Old word for the faculty of understanding, of seeing through a thing.” A.T. Robertson Be sober. “spiritual self-restraint, lest one be…

  The unconscious mind must never take the place of our conscious mind. In that unconscious mind Is my life history, weakness and strength, hurts and helps — but also Adam’s history, projected there from hell. I must forget what is past, but also cast down imaginations and high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of Christ. “Remember, our imaginations determine our self-image.” “The human mind is extremely complicated. Little is understood about the three compartments of the mind: the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. The unconscious is vast, making up 90 percent of the mind. Largely undefined, the unconscious is open to Satan’s entrapments. Often, Satan projects lies about the images in the unconscious mind to the subconscious, which represents 5 percent of the mind. The subconscious feeds the conscious mind— the remaining 5 percent.” Dr. Carl H. Stevens So we deduce: human weakness can reflect in us wrong…

In 1 Corinthians 15:10. Paul proclaims: “I am what I am by the grace of God. “There is nothing that will bend a man’s will like the recognition of divine love which is blessedness to come in contact with, and to obey.” “You may try to sway him by motives of advantage and self-interest, and to thunder into his ears the pealing words of duty and right and ‘ought,’ and there is no adequate response.” “You cannot soften a heart by the hammers of the law. You cannot force a man to do right by brandishing before him the whip that punishes doing wrong.” “You cannot sway the will by anything but the heart; and when you can touch the deepest spring it moves the whole mass.” Maclaren biblehub.com “You have seen some ponderous piece of machinery, which resists all attempts of a puny hand laid upon it to make it…

  Like a River dam or lock, We must manage the flow of grace. This includes That flow coming into our house, and then the flow going out. This is our stewardship . This is spoken of in 1 Peter 4:10  “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” I must first learn how to receive grace, but not in vain. Grace “received” is accepting something which I do not deserve. Can you do it? `Pride can inhibit this action. Many, many speakers, leaders, church members, choir singers, administrators or faculty cannot receive grace. Unsaved folks balk at grace often. The reason?  Grace is based never on the receiver, but rests in the open hand of the Giver, God Himself. It all depends on the vicarious atonement of Christ. Precious people look inward and discover…

The Christian life takes guts, but where get we this intestinal fortitude? We gain courage as we wait on the Lord, look diligently at the road ahead, access our transporting integrity, allow it’s righteousness to smooth the way mentally, watch God snatch us away! Proverbs 4:25-27 teaches: “Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.  Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”E.S.V. 1 Peter 1:13 then teaches: “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” E.S.V. Finally Heb 12:15 directs us:  “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many…

In reading, I came across these four definitions: If I have an “Idea” it means: “ the criterion by which we establish the discrepancy Between what is, and what should be,” this we call the idea. If it becomes an “Ideal”: When we understand the idea to be a kind of critical principle, which subjects our actual existence to judgment, and when we accept it as a goal to be attained, so that it becomes an image of what we should be, then the idea becomes an ideal. Utopia? “the ideal is given concrete form… on top of this the hopeful thesis is maintained that our world is actually capable of reaching this state… we are therefore committed to ensure it’s realization.” We speak of this as utopia. Ideology? “an ideal that has become pragmatic.” “The ideal and utopia may not be revered at all because of their intrinsic value,…

“God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea and he pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank and breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive.” R.C. Sproul “Men will never worship God with a sincere heart, or be roused to fear and obey him with sufficient zeal, until they properly understand how indebted they are to his mercy.”  John Calvin “We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ, except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.”  John Calvin “You contribute nothing to your Salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”   Jonathan Edwards “The ultimate test of our spirituality, Is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.” Martin Lloyd Jones “Faith, repentance and holiness are no less…