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Treasures of Truth…
During the course of our previous two visits, we learned two important things: that for some reason, God has chosen to use trees to tell His story of redemption; and that for some reason, He has chosen to use me, a very reluctant prophet, to give you an explanation for that choice. But that presents something of a challenge, doesn’t it; I mean, how is it possible for any of us to know the mind of God concerning issues of this or any other kind? After all, God is Big and we are small, God is Spirit and we are flesh, God is Infinite and we are finite, and…
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Loose Threads Require Redemption…
If I had to choose a favorite book in the New Testament, it would be a tough choice between the books of Romans and Ephesians but, in the end, I think I would have to go with Ephesians. That’s because, in its six short chapters, Paul lays out for us God’s grand plan for all humanity and in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, I am all about understanding His “grand plan.” In fact, I am so eager and determined to learn as much as I can about it that I have become very much like the little kid who tags along after her father, nagging him…
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…And More Loose Threads
Loose threads…we all have them in our lives, you know. Some of them may be hopes, dreams, or aspirations that have never been fulfilled or, as in the case of my mother, they may have been the result of decisions that were made which didn’t turn out quite the way we had intended. But just because they show up in our lives, that doesn’t mean that they are always bad things. As we saw last time, the loose threads in my mother’s life were the results of a decision that she had made and even though that decision didn’t bring the results that she had hoped for, in the…
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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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…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…
