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Do you love to hear about Him?
September 1, 2010 @ 10:05 AM EST | Category: Just Bloggin'
"I have read of an old Welsh believer, who used to walk several miles every Sunday to hear an English clergyman preach, though she did not understand a word of English. She was asked why she did so. She replied, that this clergyman named the name of Christ so often in his sermons, that it did her good. She loved even the name of her Savior." J.C. Ryle, Holiness
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Scraping the Barrel
We can do better than this!
August 30, 2010 @ 10:16 PM EST | Category: Just Bloggin'
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UPDATE: 9-2-2010
Good news. Praise the Lord. Bezeugen Tract Club has publically repented of their tract. We should all thank them for their diligence, humility and care in this matter. Here is the post on their blog: http://bezeugentractclub.org/?p=266.
Email them and encourage them for this. Christ was glorified in this we are sure.
Proverbs 27:5, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love."
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Duty Or Love
What is your motive for Christian living?
August 30, 2010 @ 10:02 AM EST | Category: Gospel Theology
"Love to Christ is the mainspring of work for Christ. There is little done for His cause on earth from sense of duty, or from knowledge of what is right and proper. The heart must be interested before the hands will move and continue moving. Excitement may galvanize the Christian’s hands into a fitful and spasmodic activity. But there will be no patient continuance in well–doing, no unwearied labor in missionary work at home or abroad, without love. The nurse in a hospital may do her duty properly and well, may give the sick man his medicine at the right time, may feed him, minister to him and attend to all his wants. But there is a vast difference between that nurse and a wife tending the sick–bed of a beloved husband, or a mother watching over a dying child. The one acts from a sense of duty; the other from affection and love. The one does her duty because she is paid for it; the other is what she is because of her heart. It is just the same in the matter of the service of Christ. The great workers of the church, the men who have led forlorn hopes in the mission–field, and turned the world upside down, have all been eminently lovers of Christ." -J.C. Ryle, Holiness
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Forbidden and Called
August 21, 2010 @ 10:11 AM EST | Category: Just Bloggin'
The Macedonian Call - Acts 16
6 And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. 8 So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
I've always found this passage in Acts an interesting one because clearly we see not only the Spirit's forbidding and calling in Paul's missionary journeys, but Paul's keen awareness, sensitivity and obedience to it.
When's the last time you were pushing forward (or at least willing to) persistently with the gospel that the Holy Spirit actually forbid you to go to a certain place? When's the last time the gospel burned in your heart like a fire shut up in your bones that you had to speak it to someone but were not allowed? I find that it's the Holy Spirit that has to do the total opposite with me. He has to prick me to go rather than forbid me. This is a rebuke to my flesh and it stings, but it cures at the same time.
When's the last time you were so keenly aware of the Spirit's moving in your life you could, without argument or fleshly rationality, obey it and be satisfied? I would imagine that at this point of the church being absolutely on fire that I would rationalize that the gospel needs to go everywhere now! It probably would never enter my mind that I would actually be prevented from going somewhere to preach it. But the Spirit blows wherever it wishes.
Lord, please help your church to become more forbidden and called all at the same time and forgive us where we've been neither.
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Going To Heaven Alone?
August 18, 2010 @ 9:35 PM EST | Category: Fishin' Thoughts
"The highest form of selfishness is that of the man who is content to go to heaven alone." -J.C. Ryle
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Do You Have Ugly Feet?
August 17, 2010 @ 9:29 PM EST | Category: Fishin' Thoughts
Romans 10:14-15
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Some Christians feet are plain ugly. Many take the most humble part of their body and dress it up with nice shoes, but scripture says the way you do it is by preaching the good news.
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Excuses, Excuses
August 6, 2010 @ 12:34 PM EST | Category: Fishin' Thoughts
A man is choking, but I'm not a doctor...
A kid is drowning, but I'm not a life guard...
A friend is about to kill himself, but I'm not a counselor...
A sinner is headed for eternal hell, but I'm not an evangelist...
If you would do something about the first three situations
but nothing about the last then you are sinning and do not understand the gospel.
Repent and be restored.
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The Only Reason We Are Here
A sermon excerpt by John MacArthur
August 3, 2010 @ 4:48 PM EST | Category: Gospel Theology
There's a cure for the SIN virus! We are given the responsibility to disseminate the cure. That's the only reason we're here.
If we were saved purely for fellowship--we might as well go to heaven now, because the fellowship here on earth is imperfect.
If we were saved to have triumph over sin—then we might as well go to heaven because the triumph here is severely checkered and we all live somewhere in Romans 7—wanting to do what we don't do, and not wanting to do what we find ourselves doing.
God left you here to share the Gospel with the people around you. Most people have some idea of what the Gospel is, but they don't have a good enough grasp to share the good news.
There's one thing we can do here that we can't do in heaven, and that is the ministry of reconciliation. That term defines the heart and soul of our responsibility as believers in the world.
God will forgive ALL your sins FOREVER—are you interested?
This is what we live for, preach for, this is what we die for—that people will be reconciled to God.
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How do you regard the Gospel?
The difference between an idea and a person.
July 30, 2010 @ 8:55 AM EST | Category: Gospel Theology
An excerpt from the book Holiness by J.C. Ryle that I want to brand on my heart!
"I am afraid that many who profess Christ in our day have lost sight of our Lord’s person. They talk more about salvation than about their only Savior, and more about redemption than the one true Redeemer, and more about Christ’s work than Christ Himself. This is a great fault, one that accounts for the dry and shriveled spirit that infuses the religious lives of many who profess faith.
As ever you would grow in grace, and have joy and peace in believing, beware of falling into this error. Cease to regard the Gospel as a mere collection of dry doctrines. Look at it rather as the revelation of a mighty living Being in whose sight you are daily to live. Cease to regard it as a mere set of abstract propositions and abstruse principles and rules. Look at it as the introduction to a glorious personal Friend. This is the kind of Gospel that the apostles preached. They did not go about the world telling men of love and mercy and pardon in the abstract. The leading subject of all their sermons was the loving heart of an actual living Christ. This is the kind of Gospel which is most calculated to promote sanctification and fitness for glory. Nothing, surely, is so likely to prepare us for that heaven where Christ’s personal presence will be all, and that glory where we shall meet Christ face to face, as to realize communion with Christ, as an actual living Person here on earth. There is all the difference in the world between an idea and a person."
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