“…‘Judas, betrayest… with a kiss?’” Luke 22:48
Judas evokes betrayal. And, it wasn’t too long before I saw addiction itself within this Judas figure. Scripture tells us a great deal about the infamous man and his downfall. Who knows exactly what motivated him? Greed? Fear? Misguided intentions? Regardless of what it was, he seemed to be driven to follow this addictive mindset.
The Judas Addiction Read More »
My name is Kelly. Here is something that happened to me that I hope blesses you….
In 1984 after struggling for years with pornography and masturbation, I was a youth pastor in the Midwest. Working for my brother the pastor. I fought and fought with my thoughts and finally went out in my car and purchased porn. Felt horrible and tired. I was so frustrated. I tried and tried to live a clean life and just failed over and over again.
“Damn, what is the point?” I asked myself. I then sat there alone in my room and calmly prayed a new prayer to God. This was a prayer that I’ve never prayed. I prayed that He would get out of my life. I prayed that I would not be a Christian any more. I prayed and boldly asked the Holy Spirit to leave.
Then I sat there alone in my room feeling even more alone. The desire for porn was gone and it felt that God was gone too. I didn’t feel guilty but I did feel very alone.
Day after day I walked in an Oak grove talking with God. I didn’t feel like a Christian anymore and it was a weird experience talking to him outside of the “family”.
I Prayed that God Would Get Out of My Life! Read More »
I am powerless over sin. That’s my problem. I used to feel damned because my life seemed to be falling apart. By the grace of God I learned that although I was just as much at fault for the problems in my life as the people in my life, God was not so cruel as to torment me for my sinfulness. In fact only he could restore me to sanity. My higher power volunteered.
Luke 4:18
He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.
John: “Sin is My Sickness” Read More »
I would like to welcome everyone to the Spiritual, Emotional & Sexual Abuse Workshop. DvoraElisheva is our leader today. She is joining us from Israel.
Being raised in a Christian home did not protect Dvora Elisheva from physical, spiritual, or sexual abuse. As an adult, her memories were more like short video clips with significant parts of the plot missing. In 1982 she moved to Israel. She became friends with a Vietnamese-Chinese family that had found refuge in Israel during the Vietnam war. This led to her 20+ years of work amongst Chinese students, teaching English using the Bible as a textbook.
After having built up a successful life in Israeli hi-tech and within her spiritual community she met her husband over the Internet in 2006. They married in 2007 and she relocated to the US to be with him and a new ready-made family. In 2010 her husband died and in 2011 Dvora returned to Israel.
Well-acquainted with grief and loss, Dvora has been transplanted back and forth between America and Israel, is a Messianic Jew living in a land that views such faith as a betrayal, and plays an active role in a Chinese church in Israel.
Phyical, Spiritual & Sexual Abuse Workshop Transcript #1 (of 4) Read More »
2 Peter 3:11-12
Hebrews 2:1, 3 NKJV
Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. . . . how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.
There was a time in the American Church when we didn’t believe that salvation was simply a one-time experience that we could do, forget about, and still retain. There was a time (and in my lifetime) when those who attended church understood that their behavior was an important part of the salvation process, not that we earn our salvation, but that we appropriate it through our choices day by day.
Are You Drifing Away? Read More »
In Haggai 2:12-19, God drives home a very telling point to the prophet. If we place an unclean thing together with a clean one, the cleanness of the latter will not rub off onto the former. If I rub my dirty and ink-stained hands on a clean towel, the cleanness of the towel will not rub off onto my hands: rather it is dirt that is transferred, and the towel becomes dirty.
By this means the Lord made clear to Haggai and Judah that sin is contagious, but righteousness is not. We are not Christians simply because we belong to a good church, a good family, or a fine community. Moreover, a good profession of faith does not make us holy or godly.
Peer Pressure & Sin Read More »
What is forgiveness of sin?
1) To forgive sin, is to take away iniquity.
“Why dost thou not take away mine iniquity?” Job 7:21.
It is a metaphor taken from a man that carries a heavy burden which is ready to sink him, and another comes, and lifts it off, so when the heavy burden of sin is on us, God in pardoning, lifts it off from the conscience, and lays it upon Christ.
He has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6.
2) To forgive sin, is to cover it.
Thou hast covered all their sin. Psalm 85:2.
This was typified by the mercy-seat covering the ark, to show God’s covering of sin through Christ. God does not cover sin in the Antinomian sense, so as he sees it not, but he so covers it, that he will not impute it.
3) To forgive sin, is to blot it out.
“I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions.” Isaiah 43:25.
The Hebrew word, to blot out, alludes to a creditor who, when his debtor has paid him, blots out the debt, and gives him an acquittance; so when God forgives sin, he blots out the debt, he draws the red lines of Christ’s blood over it, and so crosses the debt-book.
4) To forgive sin is for God to scatter our sins as a cloud.
“I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.” Isaiah 44:22.
Sin is the cloud, an interposing cloud, which disperses, that the light of his countenance may break forth.
What is Forgiveness of Sin? Read More »
This maybe one of our most daunting challenges; to daily apprehend through faith, the gospel of grace for yourself and others aggressively.
“Aggressively” literally means it will be marked by obtrusive energy and will be strong in effect and intention. Wow! Too daily apprehend through faith, grace strongly and intentionally toward ourselves and others.
Instead, most are passive about their daily faith in the gospel of grace. Whatever will be will be? No! May it never be!
Your salvation is not a reward for good behavior! It was a grace thing from start to finish; you had no hand in it. Even the gift to believe simply reflects His faith! Ephesians 2:8 (Mirror)
You did not invent faith; it was God’s faith to begin with!
It is from faith to faith. Romans 1:17 (Mirror)
He is both the source and conclusion of faith. Hebrews 12:2 (Mirror)
This aggressive grace journey progresses in/by a “mind shift” away from re-penance (faith in the law) to (faith in grace).
“The word ‘repentance’ is a fabricated word from the Latin, penance, and to even give it more ‘religious’ mileage, the English rendering became re-penance!” ~Francois du Toit
That is not what the Greek word means at all! The true word that sets the journey of grace, by faith in motion is “Metanoia.” This comes from (meta) – meaning together with, and (nous) – meaning to mind together with God’s mind; continuously perpetuated by a “radical mind-shift.”
Seizing the Gospel of Grace for Yourself Read More »
I came across a humorous post on the internet:
“Someone’s therapist knows all about you.”
It made me laugh… and think. I thought back to many therapy sessions I engaged in, talking about certain individuals and their impact of my life, disorder and state of mind. I talked about my mother, my dad and my childhood bullies. Believe me, I had A LOT to say. So, yes, even though my therapist never met them, she knew all about these people.
But this humorous post touched on something bigger. It wasn’t just about the acquired knowledge a therapist gained when his/her patient ranted about their issues. It had to do with God – the ultimate therapist-and His role in our lives as we struggle, hurt and encounter recovery.
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12>
Cue the heart, therefore:
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23
For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he… Proverbs 23:7
But this heart issue is not a passive thing, ignored by God. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“…the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
In other words…
The Ultimate Therapist Read More »
If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.1 John 2:1
From time to time we hear – sometimes even in the secular media – of some prominent Christian who has fallen into scandalous sin. I remember when Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart very publicly got caught in sin, and they were neither the first nor the last people to endure those circumstances. When we see such famous people – famous, at least, in Christian circles – fall into sin, many questions can come into our minds.
Obviously we wonder whether these people are actually Christians – a legitimate question, though we have to be careful not to condemn on partial evidence, for what would someone think of us if he had no more hard facts than we receive through the media? There is also the question of what happens to such people if they are in fact truly regenerate. Sometimes it might seem that a sin is so public, and so egregious, that surely the person involved must have lost his salvation if he ever had it.
Of course to create doctrine based solely on our reason is dangerous – our minds are as fallen as any other part of us, and are as subject to malfunction as our hearts or eyes. We simply don’t think clearly in this world – the most brilliant preachers and theologians in history (I think offhand of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and J.I. Packer – with a little work I could extend the list a long way) have not been as brilliant as they would have been had there never been a fall. Every one of us, from little children just born to certified geniuses, suffer from the effects of the fall on our minds. This is one reason why we must always derive our doctrine from the Scriptures, and subject our doctrine to the Book, for there is no human mind capable of infallibly reasoning its way to the truth.
And when we think of the
What happens when we sin? Read More »
