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Predestined to Be a Child of God
In our visits together over these past few months, we have talked a lot about two very important concepts: becoming a child of God and the necessity for overcoming as part of that process. In one of my previous reflections, as we were looking at the passage of scripture in Ephesians 1: 3-14, we came across the term, predestined, but even though I had inserted my one-word interpretation of the term in my comments, I didn’t take the time then to address the more complete meaning of this often-troublesome term. However, since predestination and its frequent companion, election, are so much a part of what it means to be a child…
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EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
If there had been newspapers back at the beginning of human history, the events that we have been discussing recently might have looked something like this when reported in the local paper. ******************************************** The Garden Gazette Serving the Greater Eden Area since the Creation of the World EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! A Crisis in the Cosmos! Yesterday, a tragedy of inestimable proportions took place in the Garden of God at Eden when a malevolent Being, previously unknown to the residents of the area, appeared in the Garden in the guise of a serpent and duped Adam and Eve, the overseers of the Garden, into disobeying the direct orders…
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And Now the Drama Begins…
When our last meeting ended, we were left waiting, poised for the drama of the ages that was about to unfold before us. Today, this is how we find the stage set before us: the first Man and Woman have been created, they are living in a garden paradise which has been prepared especially for them, in an idyllic state of innocence, and they have been entrusted with a specific word of instruction from God concerning the tree that was growing in the center of their garden. As we learned last time, Man was created for the express purpose of becoming a Son–a Child of God–however, before that could happen,…
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…But Why Couldn’t We Stay the Way We Were?
During our last time together, we began a discussion designed to lead us to a better understanding of the age-old problem of why, when we want to obey God in the spirit, do we so often fail to follow through in the flesh? It’s the old flesh-versus-spirit battle; a battle that we will need to learn to win if we are ever going to become overcomers like Jesus. We began our search by going back to the beginning of time and looking at the first man God created, so we could see how he and we were originally designed to function. What we learned was that when God created…
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The Way We Are Isn’t The Way We Were…
While it is true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and while it may seem that we have been wandering off the beaten path during some of our recent visits together, I feel certain that if we take a moment to do a brief recap of our journey together so far, we will find that we have been traveling along a remarkably straight road. In fact, we should be able to see an orderly, even progressive, pattern starting to develop—almost as if someone had planned it that way! I wish I could take credit for it but, in spite of the fact that I…
