"His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord." Ephesians 3:10-11
The above passage is one of the most thought provoking and awe-inspiring passages that I have encounteredup to this point in my journey of faith. I have taught on it (see message titled "Mystery" in the media content of this site), but obviously I can only scratch the surface of what could be said…
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Salvation
"I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols." Isaiah 42:8
Ok. You've seen the title of this entry and you have just looked at the verse I offered up, and you are thinking "I can see where this train is headed." You are probably right (being as bright as you are), but I hope you sense an evenhandedness in the thoughts I'm presenting.
First things first. I was actually pretty bummed upon hearing of Michael Jackson's death. I grew up with Michael. I wanted to dance like him (though I didn't really…
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"The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat." Mark 8:14
Let me go ahead and get this out of the way so I can get on to making some reasonably spiritual points about the above passage: I just don't ever want to hear the word "loaf" associated with food for any reason.
There are a number of reasons for this (as you probably can imagine). I can handle hearing the phrase "a loaf of bread", but when loaf starts making its way into other things I start to get a bit squeemish (Meat Loaf, Cheese…
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"Apart from Me, you can do nothing." - Jesus
I was reading recently about the top selling Christian books of the new millenium. Since we are a decade into it, it was interesting to review what the general populace in the Christian community has been consuming. It gives us a good idea of what we are thinking. Of the top 100 titles, over 50 of them were about family/marriage/parenting, with basically the rest being about the self (you know, how to be the best "you" you can be). Of the few remaining titles, there were 6 about the Bible and4 about…
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"Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever." 1 Corinthians 9:25
I think the idea expressed in what Paul writes above is one of the more cumbersome ideas to live out. Here's why: we preach the gospel (as we should) and proclaim that salvation will never, ever be a result of our own works (which is of utmost truth and high priority). But then we are stuck with this idea that "works" are bad and it carries over into how we live our…
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