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 VICTORY PROCESSION 1Corinthians 2:14-16 " But thank God! He has made us His captives and (ALWAYS) continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now He uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing.  To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?" The picture St. Paul is paining with words is that of Roman legions parading back through Rome with their prisoners in chains after a military victory. We were once driven along by sin and our old sin nature in spiritual chains, in bondage. Jesus Christ has taken the absolute totality of all sin for all time for the whole human race. He has broken our chains, cancelled the debt we owed by paying for...
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  WHAT TO RELY ON Philippians 3:3 " For we who worship by the Spirit of God  are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort," There is no way that any human being could ever restore their life to wholeness. God makes it clear in His Word that we were dead in our sin and rebellion. DEAD. There is no one more ineffective than a dead person. They cannot change their circumstances. They are powerless to save any one least of all themselves. The beauty and glory of the Gospel is that God has ALREADY done everything for us to be restore to Himself by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the sin of the whole world. Col ossians 2:11-12   " When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with Him you were raised to new l...
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ROMANS 8:1 "There is, therefore, NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death." Have you ever wondered why, in the Epistles of the Apostles, they never refer to the churches or members of those congregations they are writing as, "You sinners saved by grace." You'll find they write something like this, "I am writing to all of God's holy people in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus including the elders and deacons." (Philippians 1:1) "I am writing to God's holy people in Ephesus who are faithful followers of Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 1:1b) It seems to me that we can spend anxious time before the Lord in prayer asking for things He has already given to us...that our lives might continue to be transformed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. The Apostles called all the followers of Jesus Christ as "God's holy people....
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 ABIDING Jesus spoke of us as His Father's vineyard. Jesus is the Vine and we are His branches. Except for all Messianic Jews who follow Messiah Jesus as Lord and Savior, the rest of those who follow Jesus were "grafted into the Vine."  Those messianic Jews know that their salvation is just like that of Gentile believers. Salvation is a gift of God to be received in faith because of all He has done and finished in the Incarnation, life, ministry, sacrificial death, physical resurrection and His Ascencion, returning to the Father's Right hand. The only reason I can "abide in Christ Jesus" is that He united me with Himself. I initiated nothing. I received by grace through faith all God has done for me in Jesus. He cut away my old nature ( Colossians 2:11-15 ) and gave me a new heart and a new spirit, a new heredity, a new spiritual DNA. ( Ezekiel 11:19-21 ) God has caused me to stand before Him holy, blameless and beyond reproach. He has forgiven my sin as I b...
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 RIVER FLOW An obstacle in a riverbed will be a matter of total indifference to the River of Life that flows steadily through a follower of Jesus Christ. When our focus remains on the Source of this Living Stream within us, we know that He Who began a good work in us WILL bring that work of salvation to perfection and completion. Being justified by grace through faith, we now have PEACE with God by Jesus Christ. We have access, even now, to the grace in which we stand. Ephesians 2:18 " Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us."   Ephesians 3:12 " Because of Christ and our faith in Him,  we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence." Flow, River, flow! Trust His Life being lived in you by the Holy Spirit.
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 PSALM 106:24 " Then they despised the pleasant land;  they did not believe His promise." The people of God, those He had delivered from over 400 years of slavery in Egypt, despised the land God had given to them as their inheritance as He had promised Abraham. Why is the world would they refuse to enter in? It was then and it is the same even now...when God's people refuse to believe His promises, they balk at obeying God in the very things that ALONE make for life. He promised to drive out the utterly corrupted pagan nations and to establish Israel in the land that would be named after them. They doubted than God could lay out a banquet in the wilderness and provide for them in ways that would be new to them. They were to learn to trust and obey and to see the salvation of God. They grumbled and wouldn't obey because they trusted MORE in what they could perceive with their own finite understanding than what God had plainly laid out before them.  They saw the pagan ...
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 PURPOSE The Law of God given to Israel and the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus Christ, the Word of God Incarnate, have the same purpose. They both describe Life as it should be lived in order to know God and be reconciled to Him. Both the Law and the Sermon on the Mount, are also like mirrors exposing the true inner character of every human from Eden till now. No one, except for Jesus Christ, has ever lived a life in perfect harmony with the Law of God and Jesus' own sermon. Mankind is NOT "basically good" and any true student of human history would confirm that fact. God's Word makes that crystal clear. Humans can't ever consistently keep God's Law for to be "made righteous" by keeping the Law requires that you never, ever, ever break even one of God's Laws. Even if you kept the Law for 100 years perfectly and on your 101st birthday, you break one Law, it would be as if you never, ever, ever, even kept one of God's Laws. The Sermon on th...
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