The old covenant of law was the covenant that God made with Israel "in the day that [He] took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt" (Jeremiah 31:32b). The promise through Jeremiah was that the Lord would make a different type of covenant some day, "not according to [that] covenant." This new covenant would be a covenant of grace, provided by the Lord Jesus Christ. "For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).
Some sacrifice their principles, honor, and reputation to pander to the current flow of popular opinion. Paul was also sensitive to what others thought. But those opinions did not become his guiding light. He was a man of the word of God.
Our initial encounter with the grace of God involved forgiveness and justification. "In Him, we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Ephesians 1:7). Rich measures of God's grace washed away our sins and gave us new life in Christ. Of course, that initial justifying work of God could not exhaust His grace. Rather, it was "according to the riches of His grace." There are unlimited riches yet available for our daily sanctification, our ongoing growth in Christ.
Grace is for spiritual growth and progress in the Lord. It is not intended only for birthing and starting out with the Lord. "But grow in the grace…of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."Growth in Christ always results as God's grace works in us.
“Praise is God's sunlight in the heart. It destroys sin germs. It ripens the fruits of the Spirit. It is the oil of gladness that lubricates life's activities. There can be no holy life without it. It keeps the heart pure and the eye clear. Praise is essential to the knowledge of God and His will.” —
Smith Wigglesworth
You are training me to depend on You alone, finding fulfillment in Your loving Presence is all we need.
We’re in contentment training. God wants us to rely fully on Him knowing His plan is good whether we have everything we want or not. This world is not our home and Christ is the prize!
The crucified life really means one thing: dying to self. It means losing yourself and, in the process, finding yourself. Through death you find life. What it doesn’t mean is that we will be miserable and unable to live life to its fullest. It means the opposite. When we discover God’s plan for us, life becomes what it was meant to be.
The comparison makes what never mattered before the thing that matters most.
The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus about how to walk spiritually. Walking speaks of effort and having a direction with a destination in mind. It speaks of steady motion, regularity, consistency, activity, movement, and progress. And in Ephesians 4, Paul said, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (verse 1 NKJV). From the original language, the word “worthy” could be translated as “to balance the scales.” It can be applied to anything that is expected to correspond to something else. Paul was saying there needs to be a balance between our beliefs and our practice. Our doctrine and belief should affect us in the way that we live.
Jesus is:
The True Reformer
The True Helper
The True Achiever
The True Originalist
The True Investigator
The True Loyalist
The True Enthusiast
The True Protector
The True Peacemaker
No one who encounters Jesus ever stays the same.
We have trusted our idols and our deadly sins to save us. They have failed. They’ve made our life worse instead of better. To change our allegiances, we must transfer our trust to Jesus...
God’s desire for us is a relationship with Him and with others. Jesus transforms the way we relate. He is the pure fullness of all of our personality types. The enneagram tool can help us know ourselves better — how we interact, our weaknesses and strengths — so we can know God better and be more like Him.
"To submit to a Creator who is too wise to err and too good to be unkind should not be hard." — Charles Spurgeon
The joys of Heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of the earth.
— Charles Spurgeon
Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you. Just as a mother understands the first lispings of her infant, so does the blessed Savior understand sinners. He can read a sigh, and see a meaning in a groan.
JC Ryle
Purgatory is a deadly fiction of Satan. John Calvin
A man who wants Christ is a man who has Christ. -
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
"How can we begin a gospel presentation by telling people on their way to hell that God has a wonderful plan for their lives?" -John MacArthur.
“The Government is the servant, not the master of the people.”-–Thomas Jefferson
How do you know when you're hope is real? You put it to the test! Trust God today, and He will give you everything you need!
But what will it avail you to have Bibles in your houses, if you do not use them?
—Matthew Henry, Sermon on Family-Religion
"If the Lord is your friend, who is he that can harm you? All is well." —
Charles Spurgeon
"Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size."
-Blaise Pascal.
We have suffered bereavement after bereavement, but we are going to the land of the immortal where graves do not exist.- Charles Spurgeon
If governments aren’t to honor Christ, who are they to honor?
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