Afleveringen
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Surrendered to God
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Love God Wholeheartedly
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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The Reason for Everything
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Genesis Chapter 3 records the rebellion that began and went on to impact everything. One of the impacts of sin is that circumstances, values that are out of alignment, and emotions can often drive our lives.
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God will whisper. He will shout. He will send others. He will give us all we need through His Holy Word for life and flourishing. He sent His Son, Jesus, so that we could know Him and connect with Him. If there are 100 steps between us and Him, He will take all but one. But he will leave one for us because the choice is ours.
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No matter who we are or where we come from, we each have an idea about God. Some believe He doesn’t exist. Others believe he created the world, and that is where his interest ends. Some see God as the ultimate 911 service, only to be called upon in an emergency. Is God a grey-haired judge waiting to condemn our every wrong action, or is He grandpa in whose eyes we can do nothing wrong? The problem is that none of our images or words can adequately capture His majesty, glory, and infiniteness. He is holy, awesome, vast, and eternal. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways are higher than our ways.
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While the book of Revelation has amazing imagery, a description of the battle between good and evil, and an amazing inside look at what heaven will be, the point made by God through this revelation is that Jesus Christ is our way through death and the grave and we need to be ready for his return. God’s grace realized through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ secures our way home. Whether he returns before we die, or we die and go to Him, every human being needs a departure plan and must look beyond the temporal and recognize there is only one path home and that path is Jesus Christ.
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Today’s passage comes from a section that, frankly, most people skip when they are reading. At first glance, it looks like nothing but a list of names at the end of one of Paul’s letters, but upon inspection, we find that what Paul says about these people reveals the types of people populating our churches, our Life Groups, and our families. As we see how these people will be remembered, let’s examine our own lives so that we can decide how we want to finish the
race we’ve started. -
To call the beginning of John 1 a “prologue” would be to do it a disservice. It’s less prologue and more a historical and theological summary of the entire book that follows it. John wrote this gospel that we may know Jesus is the Messiah—the Messiah who showed up as a baby after four hundred years of silence from God.
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In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul had three main objectives: 1) Thank them for sending him Epaphroditus with a gift to support him, 2) Explain the significance of his imprisonment (possibly because Paul had heard that they were disheartened by it), and 3) Address the issue of disunity within the church. In today’s passage, Paul explains that the only way to do this is to make our attitudes like that of Christ: full of humility.
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While visiting the temple in Jerusalem with some of the disciples, Paul was noticed by a crowd intent on having him arrested. They charged him with being a Jewish apostate and began beating him in public. After defending himself before the Romans, Paul desired to step back out and address the crowd that had beaten him—not with a message of condemnation, but of his radical life change at the hand of Jesus Christ.
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Many have attributed this quote to St. Francis of Assisi (though erroneously): “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” In this famous section of Romans 10, Paul says essentially the opposite: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and it is crucial that you use words.”
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The art of rhetoric—or persuasion—is an ancient one which was, in many ways, formally begun by Aristotle in the 4th century B.C. Many Christian and Secular scholars, alike, consider Paul’s letter to the Romans to be one of the great masterworks of rhetorical writing. In Romans, Paul expertly crafts argument after argument to prove that Jesus is the only means to salvation. In today’s passage, Paul talks to believers, exhorting them to consider themselves dead to sin so that they can experience the freedom Christ offers.
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In his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:1-4), Paul urged the church to begin systematically storing up money to give to churches in Jerusalem. They were evidently excited about the opportunity to use what they had to enrich believers in need, because Paul commended their eagerness in 2 Corinthians 9:2. In this passage, Paul explains that since they have been blessed richly in Christ, they should give generously with a cheerful heart.
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Greeks had two world-famous athletic festivals: the Olympic Games and the Isthmian Games. The second of these two festivals, the Isthmian Games, were held in Corinth—the city to which Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. The athletes in these games would stick to extremely strict training regimens so that they would be in the best possible shape to win the prize at the end of them. Everybody in Corinth would have been familiar with these games and the lengths to which the athletes devoted themselves to them, so Paul uses them to draw out a bigger picture for the believers there: Athletes train day and night to win a prize made of leaves; what are you doing to receive a prize that lasts forever?
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The church that Paul wrote to in 1 Corinthians was, for lack of a better term, dysfunctional. They were set up in the middle of a culture that was full of hedonism, narcissism, and an obsession with every kind of philosophy that rode in on the wind, and these things began creeping into the church. Because they had made it into the church’s teaching, the message of the Gospel started getting replaced with worldly wisdom and philosophy. So Paul wrote to remind them of something powerful: human wisdom cannot compare to the wisdom that God displayed through the cross of Christ.
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In the middle of Galatians, Paul took a few chapters to discuss the law and its place in a believer’s life, even tracing it back to Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Beginning in Chapter 5, however, he is going to demonstrate what a believer’s life, under a new covenant of Grace, should look like in practice. Even more importantly than that, he will command believers to walk in the Spirit—doing so is the only way that they will be able to display the character of Christ.
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James, the pastor of the church at Jerusalem and the brother of Jesus, wrote his letter to Jewish Christians living in or around Palestine in the middle of the first century AD. Because of the political and social climate of the day, the people of this church were experiencing difficulties. James wrote to remind them that God is faithful even in our darkest days, that intimacy with Christ is more valuable than worldly comfort, and to encourage them to keep strong in their faith.
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James, the pastor of the church at Jerusalem and the brother of Jesus, wrote his letter to Jewish Christians living in or around Palestine in the middle of the first century AD. Because of the political and social climate of the day, the people of this church were experiencing difficulties. James wrote to remind them that God is faithful even in our darkest days, that intimacy with Christ is more valuable than worldly comfort, and to encourage them to keep strong in their faith.
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No matter what failure you’re facing or the storm you’re in the middle of, Jesus is more significant than it. He stands ready to forgive and restore us, and He asks only one thing, the same thing He asked Peter:
Follow Me. - Laat meer zien