Knowing and Doing

Do we have to see something to believe it's true?  Or can we take in truth by faith alone in what is said to be true?  This is a crossroad of belief! After these things Jesus was walking in Galilee, for He was unwilling to walk in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill Him. Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was near. Therefore His brothers said to Him, "Leave here and go into Judea, so that Your disciples also may see Your works which You are doing. "For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world." For not even His brothers were believing in Him.  (John 7:1-5) John writes in Chapter 6 of a miracle that the disciples witnessed, but then he follows with a teaching of great significance afterward when Jesus told the crowd that He is the "bread of life" and in v35 "you will not hunger or thirst".  When he started teaching this and saying these thing...

It's amazing when we pray what happens - sometimes we don't even know if God is listening.  Sometimes we don't hear a peep or we go without hearing or seeing action for a long time.  Phillip Yancey in his teaching prayer admits that he experienced a year long drought in prayer that shook his faith. That's it though isn't it?  Isn't it about faith when we pray?  When Jesus said to come and lay your burden on him, did he really mean it?  When he said ask and it will be given to you, was he serious? When James writes that the prayer of the righteous man is good is that right? When we go through storms, the problem is that we can't see.  We are confused as to the direction in our life and there certainly is no peace.  The goal is to have faith.  Jesus is at the wheel steering the ship and we ride knowing that wherever we go or whatever we ware called to do, he is at the helm - he is in control - that, my friends is peace.   When someone is tryin...

Many years of Christmas, the anticipation is on Christmas day as a child running to the tree in the morning with great excitement and joy to see what presents I got.  My heart was beating fast.  I could hardly sleep the night before.  It was the greatest time of the year.  The tree was at the center of our home and it symbolizes what is at the center of our season in some cases. The Psalmist writes:  “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (Psalm 95:6-7) Today as I open up the Word of God and read, I am reminded of this simple truth.  It’s not about centering our life around a season or a tree, we are invited to “come and worship.”  In the first chapter of John, when we read about Jesus and His disciples…the invitation was to COME.  When that babe was lying in the manger, the shepherds were invited to COME.  We are to...

“Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem.  Why do we always have to worship Him?” – Bill Maher It seems as if mankind always had a sense of worship, but to many different things.  Let’s blow this up, shall we?  Worship is giving something value – adoration and submission to.  I can go to Best Buy and drool over media and surround sound and IPad’s and I can go to the hardware store and lick my chops at power drills and saws and hammers and nails – oh my! - and when I go to work I can give great value to immersing myself in the job that I do and give it my all.  I can do the same with family, with church, and friends. Christmas was an interruption!  It came at a dark time in a dark place.  Evil leaders/kings were in control of the land, there was an unbelievable amount of poverty because of high government taxation and something amazing was about to happen – Christmas.  The temple system in Israel was spiraling out of control – it became a corrup...

We are always using key words in the church and community as to the desire of the Body of Christ from God's Word. Let's look at principle #1.....Connecting: The Church is a Family. "So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." Acts 2:41-42 Brothers and Sisters in Christ, a Family, with God as our Father. Believers should love, support, and encourage one another under the Heavenly Father. Church membership is about people not procedure. Is there a clear path to connect with the body of Christ? There should be! We should work on expanding our family every year. Principle #2.......Connecting: The Church is the Body of Christ Paul writes to the Romans 12:4-5: “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are m...

We seek to control everything in our life.  Why do we crave it and work hard to make everything work according to our plan and then we crumble when it doesn’t work out.  Some have made a profession from “control”.  They are good managers according to their strengths and talents and can handle taking control well.  In our households, we control it all and make sure things get done around there.  We spend lots of time controlling our lives and our relationships. There is a different kind of control in the Bible….”self-control”.  2 Peter 1:5-7 talks about supplementing our faith with self-control….it is listed as knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness.  The key is found in verse 8:  this should increase for our effectiveness in our faith in the Lord.  What is this and how do I get it? This self-control is a sober, temperate, calm, and dispassionate approach to life, having mastered personal desires and passions. – Holman...

“We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” - ― David Platt , Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream Platt does a great job in pointing out what comfortable and casual Christians are suffering from.  Maybe they believe that they are Christians and have been deceived that all they had to do is walk an aisle and pray a prayer. The average disciple of Christ today is materialistic and consumer driven.  We have built the community of Christ around these two things.  Here are the reasons I think so: 1.  We INVITE everyone to COME to church.  We don’t obey the Great Commission to “GO” or “As you are GOING” anymore.  We ask everyone to COME to us.  Our attendance board depends on counting the ones that are there.  So we have built a faith of ATTENDANCE. 2.  Because we are pushed to INVITE people to the church servic...