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In: Bible and Theology, God's Character, God's love, Sin and Holiness

Peace, brothers and sisters in Christ, peace.   Lately, I’ve encountered a disturbing amount of Christians bickering amongst ourselves, sometimes with the eyes of a lost world literally watching, and likely thinking if our unkind, unloving, disrespectful attitudes in the moment represent what Christ is about, no thanks. They can get plenty of that without the Lord. Meanwhile, often, everyone involved in the fussing is sure they’re right and the other person is wrong, no one is respectfully listening and respectfully responding to each other, and everyone feels justified in their bad behavior by the other side’s bad behavior, and this ugly cycle just goesRead More →

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In: Faith, God's Character, God's love, Guest posts, Suffering

Guest Post By: Diane Velikis I was married for eighteen years to a man I thought was my soul mate. Together we traveled the world, and yes, faced some hard times as well. I took care of his aunt with Alzheimer’s for over seven years, loved her, and grieved her passing. During that time I had spinal surgeries that left me in excruciating pain crying out to God for mercy. I rededicated my life to the Lord and prayed fervently for my “good” husband to come to know my Savior. Really know Him. As a little girl, I often dreamed of returning to North Carolina,Read More →

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In: Bible and Theology, God's Character, Gospel, Guest posts

The Gospel of John is interesting in that it focuses on 7 “I Am” statements. It starts with Jesus’ genealogy as the pre-existent one1. It’s hard to recognize that as a family record, but each of the gospels presents Jesus in a different way, and three of four have genealogies. Mark doesn’t because Mark presents Jesus as a servant and no one cares about the genealogy of a servant2. John focuses on Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. To accomplish this, there are 7 “I Am” statements. The first is “I Am the bread of life3.” In this segment, Jesus uses an analogy ofRead More →

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In: Faith, God's Character, God's love, Prayer and Devotions

Or, as Adam Graham would’ve titled this, “The Realm Makers After Action Report.” This year, Adam Graham determined to send me to Realm Makers, to keep his promise that it was my turn next time, so he could go next year. After being persuaded he had just enough money on our tight budget squirreled away, I let myself get excited. Made my plans, carefully prepared everything I thought I’d need at the conference, packed a big suitcase with my laptop, professional clothing, night clothing, exercise clothing, my costume party gear, and multiple folders worth of conference materials, including one for taking notes and three to giveRead More →

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In: God's love, Post-Modernism, Prayer and Devotions

Brothers and Sisters, let us remember that “love one another” is the second greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is to love God, and to love God is to trust him and seek to be obedient (out of gratitude for our salvation, not as a requirement of our salvation.) Let’s be on our guard for the enemy will seek to convince us to break the first commandment in the name of fulfilling the second and in doing so exchange true love for God and Man for an idolatrous counterfeit. That said, let’s also not break the second commandment in the name of keeping the first commandment.Read More →