The List, Our Credentials

When you get ready to travel to another country you have to have a passport to prove your nationality and identity. It speaks about your travel credentials and affirms who you are and why you are there. Your national identity defines the values of the country you are from and what the place you are visiting can expect when they admit you. Being disciples of Jesus means our citizenship is not in this world (Php.3:20, 1Pet.2:9). We are spiritual visitors whose…

That's the real question isn't it? We need real leaders in this fragmented world. What does it mean to be a leader and where do we find them?

Let’s look at our present secular situation to get our bearings as believers. First, as I stated before, leadership on every level of our society is caving in to the morality of the moment. The President of the United States is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Israel, anti-border protective, pro-Islam, anti-Bible and a host of other divisive…

Ephesians 1

I’d like to suggest that Pauls’ letter to Ephesian believers may be a key epistle for today’s believers. Of course all of Scripture fits any age but sometimes the age demands direct response from believers and Ephesians fits the bill to help. The dynamics of Ephesian life was not unlike those of cities in our own time.

To get a feel for Ephesus you look at its history. It was a major commercial center in Asia Minor and as far as Paul was concerned was critical for…

As promised this parable helps us to look at how we meet every next moment. So we’ll look at it a verse at a time.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13)

Vs.1. “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins (bridesmaids), who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.”

‘At that time’---Jesus is referring to His return which will be like a bridegroom coming to claim his bride---the Lord returning for His bride, His Body of believers.…

More and more we have to concentrate on the day to day world in which we live and expand our tents within it (Is.54:2). Especially in this present day environment when what seems overwhelming is really a call to us to put what we can’t control in the hands of the One who knows how to handle it. The real call is to us individually right where we are. The call is to look forward, pray forward, pay forward and stay forward as we come to every next moment.

Every next moment is where faith…

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “The world is going to hell in a hand basket.” While this may carry a tone of casual agreement in a conversation there is more to it than its use indicates. First of all when I think of a hand basket it’s one of a stack of item carriers at the entrance to a supermarket designed to carry small items for a quick purchase. Actually the true nature of the world is just as compactable in our mind and especially in God’s mind. He knows the world’s…

When all moments become one.

Actually that’s what we are looking forward to, when moments blend into one continuous moment where experience has no lines, limits, layers or location. Distinctions, divisions, differences disintegrate into one flowing movement. This world is about each moment, a half-life edging toward a whole life. That which is to come, the life to come, the face of eternity, is total freedom from the boundaries of our self-consciousness aloneness.

In this world…

On to the specifics-------

Taking the Lord’s cue when He asked Adam, “Where are you?” we want to see where we are in our every next moment and its momentary pressure. Here is Paul’s counsel, “Since we live by the Spirit let us keep in step with the Spirit (Gal.5:25).” Now follow his counsel as you read the following. Think of it like this: you are in a two dimensional world, yourself and others. In the first, where are you…

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).

I probably left you hanging on what the answer might be to the spiritual predicament of our modern age with its growing rejection of faith in Jesus. I believe we need to address where we are as believers. Let me tell you what I am getting at right up front before you read on. We have got to shed our ‘church member’ mentality and take on a ‘Body of Christ’ spirituality. Two concerns stand out for me, where we are…

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).

Herein is embedded the difference between religious liberals and biblical conservatives. Liberal religionists live for the temporary. Biblical conservatives live for the eternal. Liberals center all their attention on what they can get for the moment. Conservatives center their attention on individual initiative, creativity and the work necessary to achieve. These two are the polar opposites that define a…

“We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and only Son…(Jn.1:14).” “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with…

Intelligent design can be seen in the stable working of the physical universe. It has order built into it. So what about the invisible order? What governs it? It seems that the problem of human existence is not in what can be seen but in what can’t be seen. There is tremendous disparity between the two. While the universe seems to function according to a set system it is the invisible forces in people that create suffering in everything from personal relationships to all-out war between…

Every year the National Football League conducts a draft to choose players for each team. There are seven rounds the most prestigious of which is the first. When you are a first round draft choice your name is broadcast all over the world, you receive immediate media attention and ‘visions of sugar plums dance’ in your head. Millions of dollars await your beck and call. As you make your way ‘down’ the second to seventh rounds your value decreases. Unlike the first two rounds those chosen are…

You know, when you look outside the window and find yourself in the mountains surrounded by trees in full leaf array, a bird nesting with young in the eaves of where you’re staying, the rush of a roaring stream filled with recent rainfall and breathing the freshly strained air, there is a sense that this is more than just Creation. It makes you aware, aware that what you perceive is a brush stroke across the canvass of reality swept by a mind of infinite architectural artistry, a caring…

We have been talking about intelligent design behind the whole of the universe. For us as disciples of Jesus the idea is a given. So let’s look at it in a bit more detail as we consider what it means to be intelligently designed in the image of God. We have an identity. We are individuals, persons with unique minds, hearts and spirits, threefold spiritual personalities with physical bodies who are so unique that no one before or since has ever or will ever be the same. We have a…

Revisiting a needed discussion:

As I was thinking about what I needed to be writing today this two word description of the universe’s origin popped into my mind. I take that as a nudge to explore. Rather than look into the vast material available on the subject I go to the Scripture to see what it really means there. I was struck immediately, after looking at Genesis 1, the definitive conclusion that God created all existence both invisible and visible. But I was also struck with…

This came from Ted Schroder, Pastor, Amelia Island Chapel. Pass it on if you know folks who it might help. ><>Whitey

Posted: 01 Jun 2013 11:22 AM PDT

Recently I have become aware of how many people I know suffer from worry and anxiety. Dr. Archibald Hart’s book, Overcoming Anxiety, was a great help to me some years ago. These are his Twelve Steps to Overcome Worry.

Admit that you are a worrier and that you are powerless to overcome worry on…