Giving 101

 Here is a link to my sermons at GVF. My most recent message is entitled: Jesus Our Provider- Giving 101

https://www.sermonconnect.com/standalonegold.php?church=114370

The Secret of Contentment

 

Here is a link to my sermons at GVF. I preached this one on 06-21-09 and it is titled: Jesus Our Strength- The Secret of Contentment.

Jesus Our Example: Humility

Link to a video presentation of a sermon I preached on Philippians 2:1-11 entitled Jesus Our Example: Humility.

Taming My Tongue

One thing I have come to learn is this: that wisdom is not so much expressed in that which you say wisely, but in that which you wisely don’t say.  For me it seems as though, the less I speak, the better off I am. One of the areas I have struggled with in my Christian walk has been in taming the tongue. James warns of the dangers of an untamed tongue (James 3) and so today I want to encourage you with some things I’ve learned in my years of attempting to tame my tongue. We find in Matthew 12:36-37 “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. ”For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” The issue of a tame tongue is obviously one of import in our discipleship to the only Wise God.

What are some characteristics of a wild tongue?

The primary characteric of an untamed tongue is

A Few Thoughts on Adversity

Adversity is the experience of pain, opposition, distress, disappointment, difficulty, grief, loss, or something similar. Why does God allow adversity in our lives? One answer that has been offered is

What Happens When I Die? 4 Issues In Understanding Life and Death

Pricked Again By Pensees

In his, Pensées, Pascal discusses the need of many individuals to seek distractions and diversions in life in order to take their minds away from the larger questions of life and death. He writes:

“Their error does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call their quest a vain one … And thus, when we take the exception against them, that that they seek with such fervour cannot satisfy them, if they replied – as they should do if they considered the matter thoroughly – that they sought in it only a violent and impetuous occupation which turned their thoughts from self, and that they therefore chose an attractive object to charm and ardently attract them, they would leave their opponents without a reply. But they do not make this reply, because they do not know themselves. Thy do not know that it is the chase, and not the quarry, which they seek”. (Pascal, 1952, p. 197)

Are you constantly seeking and consuming people, places, and things in an attempt to forget about you mortality and your alientation from the one true God, others, and in truth…yourself.

Plato would say of people like you in Laws V: “he sells all that gives the soul its beauty and value for a few paltry pieces of gold; but all the gold upon the earth and all the gold beneath it does not compensate for lack of virtue”. (Plato: The Complete Works, 1997, p. 1411)

Have you considered the words of Christ: ”Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

Why not stop striving after the wind and wasting your life?  Why not see the activities in your life for what they are…distractions, diversions, and emptiness? Why not give up your soul to the source of truth, beauty, and goodness- the Living God, Jesus, and be satisfied forever.  

Please Don’t Do Nothing: A Biblical Mandate to Do Something About Abortion

This article is a resource of abort73.com. For more articles and resources that will help you fight against the advance of evil, please visit www.abort73.com

A Biblical Mandate to Do Something About Abortion
Page Summary:
This document exists for two reasons: to convince more of God’s people to enter the active defense of abortion-vulnerable children and to help those already making a defense to be more biblical.

“How can I lose my disgusting pride?”

The more free from sin and the more sanctified God makes me, the more I recognize how pollutedly weak my self, still bound by a sin nature, actually is. I am continually awestruck and overtly grateful for the reconciliation God has made with me. Though in my mind I am aware of my positional sanctification, I am humbled by the knowledge of my actual state of holiness which is a lack there of. I might seem to be holy for a time until I inevitably give in to sin. It might just be a minor slip, but the more I grow in Christ, the more difficult to bear the minor slips become. My unrighteous anger which well up in me is often unrighteously exhausted on others (I become agitated when I am corrected or controlled). The more I grow in Christ the less the anger seems to well up in me and the less it affects others. However, it is still there and I ask the same question the apostle Paul asked: Why do I do what I don’t want to do?

My question is this: “How can I lose my disgusting pride?” How can I keep from not only exhausting my anger on others, but also, keep it from welling up in me when my pride is thwarted. I can’t seem to shake it, no matter

Imago Dei- Interaction w/ Grenz’s “The Social God and the Relational Self”

The Hebrew Term, selem, the first of two terms whose meanings must be understood in order to have a correct understanding of the imago dei, appears seventeen times in the OT and means “image.” Selem has a sense of concreteness (physical representations or natural objects) as well as abstractness (being likened to a shadow) and is argued that its basic meaning is that of “representation.” Werner Schmidt writes that “just as a shadow images an object, so also the image it forms reproduces the thing it depists; it facilitates the objects reappearance” (186).

The second of the two Hebrew terms connected with the imago dei is demut, and carries the meaning of “likeness” or “resemblance.” Recent scholars almost unanimously argue that demut and selem are basically synonymous terms with only slight distinction but they debate the reason for inclusion of both terms in the first creation narrative. THose who argue that the inclusion of both words has theological significance as opposed to being merely interchangable give several reasons for the inclusion of demut, such as “obviating the danger of surmising from selem too close a connection between created humankind and the divine Creator and to explain and add preceision to selem by indicating that the created image is to correspond to the original by resembling it” (187).

The most widely held view concerning the image of God is that entailing a similarity between God and humankind. The focus of the similarity is on the

Are There Many Paths To God? 3 Reasons That Show Jesus Is The Only Path To God

Below is the message I preached on March 15, 2009 entitled- Are There Many Paths To God?: 3 Reasons That Show Jesus Is The Only Path To God…as part of a Crucial Questions sermon series. You can download this message at www.gvfonline.org.

Would it bother us more if they used guns?

Would it bother us more if they used guns?

Lord have mercy on us and forgive them for they know not what they do.

Please vist http://www.abort73.com/ for more information.