Skip to main content

 Today, I saw the picture below posted. The problem with it, is that it isn't even close to being sound biblically.

FAITH will always give birth to the good works that God has foreordained His followers to live into and to do with their whole heart. We are saved by grace through faith and that is the work of God, who reconciled us to Himself by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Going into all the world to make disciples (not converts) is going to take effort, cooperating with the Holy Spirit. Making disciples is good, sound, hard work enabled by the power of His life at work in and through us. Human works can never redeem anyone. It's what God has done, not what we do. But, being redeemed, His life and ministry, His works should flow as a matter of course even as apple trees produce apples.
SOUND DOCTRINE, if it is truly biblical will never deny signs and wonder; will never call them the "world's lies", for Jesus plainly stated that those who would follow Him would do the very things He had been doing and even greater because He was going to the Father. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth even warned them not to despise prophecy nor forbid speaking in tongues. Signs and wonders, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in power for doing the ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ, are given to the church and confirm the Word being declared as the Holy Spirit chooses. The church has been empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue to minister as Jesus did. To call them "lies of the world" borders on speaking against the Holy Spirit; limiting Him to one's experience, rather than sound doctrine.
BIBLICAL GRACE is not something ever kept in isolation in the intellect. God grace is not some cold intellectual assertion. It is the overwhelming, unmerited loving kindness of God in Christ Jesus that impacts the whole person: spiritually, emotionally, willfully and even physically. Experiencing the grace of God and feeling His Presence are not "lies of this world"! Now, if you believe your feeling DEFINE the presence of God with you, you've missed the point. He has promised to NEVER leave us or forsake us. Our feelings do not define or circumscribe His grace, but His grace is not something devoid of either feeling or experience. "T'was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved..." is not some cold recollection!
The cartoon below is just that, a cartoon and no more an accurate assessment of what following Jesus means than right is to almost right. Take great care. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. His Word has not changed. If your doctrine and understanding doesn't line up with the whole counsel of His Word, then your doctrine and understanding are they things that are still flawed.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HEARING MUST BE UNITED TO BELIEVING Hebrews 3:16-19 “And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard His voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would never enter His rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him? So, we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter His rest.” I have heard people say, “If I heard the voice of God. I would not rebel; I’d believe.” Others have said, “If I saw a miracle, I’d believe.” We really do not have a grip on the capacity for unbelief that is resident in the human heart and mind. The children of Israel saw God decimate the false gods of Egypt in the plagues He sent through Moses. The Lord God who had called Abraham made sure that Abraham’s children saw that the gods and religious culture surrounding them for 400 years were not gods at all...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HIS POWER...HIS PROMISE Helping people walk in the Spirit the devotional below is seminal! The devotion below is today from Oswald Chambers. I makes me think of some I have known that have assumed that the Lord doesn’t want them empowered by the Holy Spirit or that He won’t manifest Himself in them because they have reasoned otherwise. Given ministry opportunities to have the Holy Spirit confirm the Word of God with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power, they rely on how they feel, their experience thus far and not on the reality that the will of God in mission and ministry is either done in the Holy Spirit’s Power or not at all. Our capacity to do what Jesus does has nothing to do with our imagined capacity, but upon the indwelling power of God through is. Now to Him who is able to do far above and beyond what we could ever imagine or think, by His power at work in us now, to Him be glory…   Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus told the parable of the bags of gold as a warning ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 INFINITELY MORE Ephesians 3:20-21 " Now all glory to God, Who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.   Glory to Him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen." In the Gospel of John, many of His followers turned away because of the covenant commitment He required of those who would follow Him. That covenant declared that what was to happen to Jesus would also happen to them. We, too, must lay our lives down and choose the will and way of God's Kingdom over all else. Those in the crowd knew that in Jerusalem, the Jewish religious leaders were plotting and planning Jesus' destruction. To follow Jesus to that degree required denying self and the thrall of the world and its ways, even to the point of laying one's life down by refusing to deny the Lord and His salvation. Jesus turned to the 12 and asked, " Are you also going to leave?" ( John 6:67-...
Post a Comment
Read more