Humility

Perspective: “We Can Admire And Worship Jesus Without Doing What He Did”

/ Jesus_Follow3r

Introduction

Personally, I take great delight in gleaning new knowledge, insights and lessons from God’s Word and through various Biblically-sound teachers. I am thankful that God has created human beings with a rich intellectual capacity to think, reason,  problem-solve and rationalize on the varying complexities of life. Specificially, Christian Scholarship has presented us with an unprecedented level of access to innumerable academic Christian-based resources. While I do believe that God has worked powerfully through Christian Scholarship over the decades, I cannot help but recognize a subtle but very real danger that it sometimes poses to the Church today, namely incentivizing passivity. 

Continue reading →

Insight: What is Dividing the Church More Than Anything

/ Jesus_Follow3r

Unity among those who belong to the body of believers(the Church) is radically important. When the Church is divided among itself, how can it possibly stand in the face of opposition? Jesus said it best when He tells us that “If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand”(Mark 3:25). In order to be fruitful for Kingdom-furthering purposes and effective for defending ourselves against spiritual warfare, we need to come together as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet, precisely the opposite is happening today within the Church. There is such a high degree of envy, jealousy, bitterness, backbiting, slander, and gossip among those claiming to be apart of the same Church Body. The world already has enough of this! The last thing that it needs is a Church comprised up of professing believers who cannot even co-operate among themselves. Therefore, the Church will not be able to render sustainable change within the world until those within it begin to work together instead of against one another.

Continue reading →

Let Christ’s Love Cast Out Fear!(Part 1 of 3)

/ Jesus_Follow3r
slides_perfect-love-05

Fear is an extremely power thing. If fear is not handled properly, it is capable of destroying a person simply because of its crippling effects. There are those within this world today who live in maximal fear–sometimes for understandable reasons, other times because they have allowed fear to control their lives entirely.

What I want to progress towards discussing within this series are the terrifying ramifications of when believers succumb to fear-based religion. As an introduction, today’s focuses will be on (1) providing historical background of religion within Christendom and on (2) highlighting one of the threats some “christian” churches pose towards spiritual seekers and professing believers alike. 

Continue reading →

Pride will Destroy

/ Jesus_Follow3r

Has anyone ever stopped and pondered on what the root of every sin is? Fundamentally, I would contend that the root of every sin is pride. As innately sin-prone humans, we do not merely sin for the sake of sinning. Rather, the allure of sin is derived from the deception that we are autonomous beings who foolishly think that we do not need to be accountable to any higher being. We sin out of our own selfish-thinking which postulates that we know what is best for us and that we have somehow evolved past needing God. When we sin, we blatantly transgress and disobey God, essentially telling Him that we are sovereign over our lives. In doing so, we push God away and decide to live selfishly.Pride.jpg

Continue reading →

The need for Compassion (Comparison Cure #4)

/ Jesus_Follow3r

Beautiful message!
Maintaining Christ-like Compassion is so crucial yet so easily forgotten about nowadays!
Thank-you for this well-timed blog post!

Elihu's avatarElihu's Corner

This is the fifth post in the series on Comparison Cures. To read the previous post, click here.

Jenny steeled herself and walked purposefully through the familiar front door. The cozy little house was already buzzing with the chatter of women. Jenny plastered a smile on her face, determined not to be the dark cloud on her friend’s special day.

After exchanging pleasantries with the hostess and a few other ladies, she found her dear friend, Julia, standing near a pile of blue presents and bright balloons. Her protruding belly announced to the world that a new life would soon be making its debut. Jenny wrapped her arms around her friend in a warm embrace.

“How are you feeling?” Jenny asked.

“I’m ok. My back is killing me, but that’s to be expected,” replied Julia. “Are you doing ok?”

Julia knew this wasn’t the best time to ask, but…

View original post 1,647 more words

5 Ways To Actually Practice Mercy You Need To Know

/ Jesus_Follow3r

Admittedly, I didn’t have the opportunity to read last Thursday’s post, however based on the excerpt you provided here, I absolutely agree with your insightful thoughts.
What I have come to discover is that Truth is often the toughest pill to swallow, especially during particular seasons/times when we have permitted our Christian lives to become complacent (myself included).
Over the recent years, I feel that throughout Western Culture we have allowed Christianity to become too comfortable.
Nowadays, it is very evident that the number of Christians whom actually pursue godly risks, and take leaps of faith is dwindling. This deeply saddens me, and this reminds me even more so of how much work is needing to be done by Christians in this broken world.
Jesus tells us that “…The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Luke 10:2).
Jesus not only clearly identifies the problem (which is just as relevant now as it was then), but He also provides us with the solution. The solution is simply found in faithfully asking(through prayer) our Mighty God to send(emphasis) workers(you and I) into the harvest field(to those in need within the front-lines).
It is worth noting as well that believers doing the praying are no more exempt from actively partaking in this work of spreading the Gospel(The Great Commission) themselves than other believers.

God Bless!

Hate Isn’t Helpful

/ Jesus_Follow3r

I definitely agree with this author’s thoughts regarding the destructive influence that hatred has amassed within our already-fractured world. Sadly, hatred has become increasingly more and more prevalent in this day and age. Having said this, I am genuinely concerned for what is on the horizon for this generation in light of the frighteningly significant level of traction that hatred has gained.
Roman 12:21 tells us the solution to this dilemma by instructing us to, “…not be overcome by evil, but [to] overcome evil with good”.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Please bless all of us as we fight the good fight by seizing every opportunity while striving to make a difference by being empowered with Your Holy Spirit.
Also, please help us to keep our eyes on Your Son: Jesus Christ, Who is our Living Hope, where we are made completely secure and anchored by means of Your unfailing love!

In Jesus’ Name I pray,
Amen.

Steve Keating's avatarLead Today

So…. I sent out a tweet a few days ago about hate. It said basically that you don’t gain anything by hating and that the “hater” loses more than the “hated.” That’s it, it didn’t say anything about who hated, why anyone would hate, it mentioned no name, no race, no sexual preference, no political affiliations, nothing.

Immediately after sending it out, and I mean immediately, I started getting replies about how stupid liberal democrats are and how republicans make it hard not to hate. In short, I received a bunch of hate-filled replies agreeing that hate was terrible but blaming either democrats or republicans for making it impossible not to hate.

I’m going to guess here but I’m betting it was Republicans blaming Democrats and Democrats blaming Republicans.

Other people blamed gays for hate, or Muslims, or TV news, or cops, or blacks, or whites, it went on and…

View original post 703 more words