Morning Musings: 2 Corinthians 1:9

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“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.  But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the questions that has haunted humans since sin entered into the world is why bad things happen.  How do we reconcile the presence of evil in the world with our innate sense that the world was designed to be good?  For those who have heard the Christian claims of a God who is perfectly loving and all-powerful at one and the same time this challenge becomes even more acute.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Corinthians 1:4

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“…who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Why does God comfort us?  Why does He extend any grace to us?  Well, the first answer is that He does it because He is gracious.  It is in His nature to do this for us.  The fuller answer and the one to which Paul is pointing here is that He does it so that we can pass along the blessing to other people.

God always acts in the best interest of the other.  His love always moves outward to find an object.  When that love is poured out on us regardless of the form it happens to take, it is intended not to stay with us, but to be poured out on still others.   Read the rest…

Test Every Spirit

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In this past Sunday’s installment of A Word on Reality, we paused with John to be reminded once again how we can know what’s true and what’s not.  In a world that is awash in different voices claiming to have the corner of the truth market, how do we figure out which voices are worth heeding and which are to be tossed out with the garbage?  Keep reading to find out…

 

Test Every Spirit

If I were to ask you what the fastest growing religious affiliation in this country is according to recent survey data, what would you guess it to be?  Let’s take a look at the broad categories starting with the group “religious, Christian.”  From 1990-2008 the number of adults identifying themselves as part of a mainline Christian denomination (most Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopals, Lutherans, and the like) in the U.S. shrank by about 10%, or a total loss of 3.5 million members.  The number of Baptists grew by about 6% or a little over two million people.  Folks identifying themselves as either Pentecostals or simply nondenominational of some sort grew by 40% and 25%, respectively.  And, just to round things out, the number of Catholics grew about 25%, although most of that was from immigration, not conversion.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 103:8-12

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“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.  He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

For anyone who would argue that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New Testament by being much angrier and more focused on judgment, you have to explain away passages like this one.  And this is not the only time this characterization appears in the Old Testament.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Proverbs 21:2

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“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”  (ESV)

There is absolutely no better salesman on the rightness of what we plan to do than ourselves.  We can convince ourselves of literally anything given enough time and motivation.  If left to our own devices, we can justify just about any behavior.

One of the most popular slogans of our culture today is to follow your heart.  As warm and fuzzy as this advice is made to sound, however (and nobody has worked quite so hard to make it the central thought of every young person than Disney), the truth is that it is awful advice.  Absolutely awful.

Because of sin, our hearts are hopelessly corrupt and deceptive.  If we follow our own hearts we are going to find our way into nothing but trouble and lots of it.  If instead we turn ourselves over to the God who defines right and wrong and let Him be our guide regardless of where our heart is telling us to go, the likelihood of our finding ourselves on the right track goes up enormously.

The Lord weighs the heart.  Let us let Him weigh ours so that we stay following after Him on the path to life.