Category: Christian

The Light in the Darkness

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We, all human kind, have an enemy that seeks to devour us. (1 Peter 5:8) We see evidence of this enemy’s work in the world in the news every day. It takes many forms: gang killings, child sexual abuse, crime in general, divisive politics and the “culture wars”, and all the ways that people hurt people and the things that cause divisiveness, lack of respect, lack of peace and turmoil in the world.

Some of that turmoil is reflected in the over aggression of policeman, who are called to serve and protect, who exhibit a callous disregard of life, even for the lives of obvious criminals. Some of that turmoil is seen in the rioting, looting and blind anger that is partially a response to incidents of police misconduct and partially the boiling over of a cauldron of racial unrest. Some of that turmoil is is evidenced in the increasing number of incidents of violence against men and women in uniform.

We live in a fallen, hurting and divisive world. Continue reading “The Light in the Darkness” →

6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College

College, for me, was a time of great spiritual growth. Even in that secular academic environment, I thrived both in faith and in academics. You can too. You can grow in your walk with Christ – not in spite of the challenges of an unbelieving, or even hostile, secular environment, but because of it!

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I have been reading for some time about how this generation of youth coming out of “the Church” are not as biblically literate as past generations. I do not know, myself, whether that is true or not, but I do know that many people of faith struggle in college.

Outside of Christian colleges, the academic world is, generally, is not very friendly toward faith. Those academics who are not actually hostile to the kind of faith that the Bible teaches simply put up with it as if it were some sort of oddity that people with lesser intelligence and more naivete get caught up in, but which has little relevance to anything intellectual.

That is far from the truth, of course. The intellectual underpinnings of faith are deep and wide. For the Bible believer, however, faith leads and the intellect follows. That is not the case for most of academia. Even for those who give some intellectual assent to faith in the academic world, intellect is the leader, and faith (if we can call it that) is the follower. That is not the faith of Abraham that God counted as righteousness. Our Christian colleges and universities include many of these people in their ranks. Continue reading “6 Helps for the Christian Preparing for College” →

Catholics, Pentecostals and the Body of Christ

God’s sheep hear His voice. God knows His own. They sit in the whole spectrum of churches on any given Sunday morning or Saturday night, and some of them do not visit churches very often at all.

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A Sheperd by Lauri Heikkinen
A Sheperd by Lauri Heikkinen

The article, A Classic Pentecostal Encounters Charismatic Catholics, takes me back to the early days of my Christian walk. I was raised Catholic, but I found little attraction to church as a child. We went to church religiously, a practice I later came to appreciate about my parents, but there seemed to be nothing in it for me. I even felt uncomfortable in church.

I went through some very rebellious teen years, wandering lost through the haze and fog induced by alcohol and drugs, drifting to the edge of the precipice, before I woke to the emptiness that I had inexplicably been embracing. That was not my conversion, but just the beginning of walking in a new direction.

Fast forward just a short while to college where I entered like a kid in a candy store with a new found passion for knowledge and truth. I thought I had left religion behind. Actually I did (and have never returned). What I did not realize is that I would discover the life that religion seemed to enshroud like an empty tomb. Continue reading “Catholics, Pentecostals and the Body of Christ” →

The Sign of Jonah

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The Sign of Jonah by George Redgrave
The Sign of Jonah by George Redgrave

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign[i]; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” (Matthew 16:4)

Jesus spoke of the sign of Jonah twice. The ironic thing is that everywhere Jesus went, he performed signs and wonders. What were those people looking for?!!

The “problem” for the religious leaders was that Jesus challenged their religious dogmas, and He did it on purpose! Continue reading “The Sign of Jonah” →

The Profit of a Man

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Life Is Elsewhere by Gisela Giardino
Life Is Elsewhere by Gisela Giardino

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny[i] himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

There is no statement anywhere in the whole of the Bible any more fundamental or important than these words Jesus spoke immediately after He spoke of His own future suffering. All of the Law and Prophets speak of Jesus. (John 5:31) Jesus was approaching the nadir of the purpose for which He, God stripped of His glory, became man. As the disciples rebuked Jesus about talking about future suffering, Jesus spoke these words.

As Jesus looked forward to His own suffering, He looked back to His disciples and said, “If you would follow Me, you must be all in.” Jesus was ready to set the example, and he pointedly instructed His disciples what it would mean to follow Him. They must have taken His words figuratively, as they had no idea Jesus would hang in a literal cross not long thereafter. Continue reading “The Profit of a Man” →