From the early days of the Lord's church, a constant threat has been posed by those who want to change God's grace into something it is not. The attempted changes always relate to either licentiousness or legalism.
Food, like any other thing God made for our nourishment and joy, is not a sin. Eating isn’t a sin. But, what if we utilized food as a way to honor God and grow closer to Him? What would happen within us if we chose to eat healthfully and put every stumbling block before Jesus and ask for His help to deny ourselves anything that was an overindulgence and be filled with Him instead?
"If you regard not God's voice, how can you expect He should mind yours?" -
Nathaniel Vincent.
Better to have God as your Friend rather than your Foe!
"The Christian who keeps his heart diligently in little things shall be kept from great falls." -J.C.Ryle.
"Every week I preach justification by faith to my people because every week they forget it." -Martin Luther.
The Scriptures reveal a profound connection between God's grace and His Holy Spirit. Living by the grace of God and walking according to the Spirit are two different perspectives on the same reality. As we consider what walking in the Spirit comprises, we also gain insight into living day by day by grace.
Will our sins discourage us when he appears there only for sinners? Be of good comfort, he calls you. Conceal not your wounds, open all before him, and take not Satan's counsel. Go to Christ…” — Richard Sibbes
Fulton Street is waiting for us the moment we wake up every day. Revival is ours for the taking with time spent with the Lord!
It is a powerful testimony to the world when a Christian can praise God despite hardship. Christians face the same hardships that nonbelievers face. But when they see us praising God despite adverse circumstances, when they see us honoring the Lord, that is a powerful testimony. Our worship can be a witness.
“Prayer is nothing else than a sense of God’s presence.” — Brother Lawrence
"Do you have a hunger for God? If we don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because we have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. If we are full of what the world offers, then perhaps a fast might express, or even increase, our soul's appetite for God." —John Piper
Praying and fasting is a biblical practice that gives us the opportunity to focus on the Lord, allowing us to find extra time and energy to pray, hear God’s voice, and experience His presence.
Examples of fasting in the Bible include:
· Moses Fasted Before Receiving the Commandments – Deuteronomy 9:9-18
· David Mourning His Child’s Illness – 2 Samuel 12:1-23
· Elijah Fasted While Escaping Jezebel – 1 Kings 19:4-8
· Ezra Fasted While Mourning Over Sin – Ezra 10:6-17
· Esther Fasted for the Safety of the Jews – Esther 4:15-17
· Daniel Fasted for an Answer to Prayer – Daniel 10:1-3
· Jesus Fasted Before Temptation by Satan – Matthew 4:1-2
· Paul Fasted After His Conversion – Acts 9:1-9
If your version of Christianity is always comfortable, convenient, and mainly about you. It’s not the Christianity of the New Testament.
After a life mostly of regrets, mistakes, major miscalculations, wrong thoughts, wrong words, wrong deeds, and a life filled with sin, and yet the grace of God is unfailing despite it all. All because of one man, one God. Jesus. Romans 5:20
"I have not to preach to you a salvation loseable and dependent upon your good behavior; but lo, I preach a pardon never to be reversed, acceptance in the Beloved never to be canceled, adoption which makes you sons forever." - Charles Spurgeon
Who but the Lord God can raise up all that are bowed down, and comfort all that mourn?
- John Newton
God's strong love stands like a granite rock unmoved by the hurricanes of our iniquity
-C.H. Spurgeon
“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” -
C.S. Lewis
“[Jesus] is a physician good at all diseases, especially at the binding up of a broken heart. He died that he might heal our souls with a bandage of his own blood, and by that death save us.” — Richard Sibbes
The whole Bible tells us, from beginning to end, that salvation is not by the works of the law, but by the deeds of grace.
“I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner He pleases, either with or without this body.
(T. Paine, 1794)
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