Sheep Food

  In case it has not been brought to your attention yet, let me be the first to inform you that God has this unwavering way about repeating Himself, over and over and over; and for good reason. We ‘believers’ would do well to sit up and take notice, because we tend to be slow at times at 'getting it'. Do you know what the one area is that God makes it a point to keep repeating Himself? It might surprise you…especially since the ‘church’ (His ‘supposed’ body) places little emphasis on this one thing. Let me lay it out for you this way today, and see if it doesn’t resonate and ‘connect a few more dots’ for us all. It has to do with ‘keeping His commandments’. What our Bible teaches: “Oh, that they has such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep ALL My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.” (Deut. 5:29,33) [you might just read through chapters 5-11 when you have time and see how often this theme is stressed] “I believ...

  If you’ve not experienced this ‘bell-ringing milestone’ yourself… you probably know someone personally who has. I’ve known several over the years. It marks the end of what can be grueling treatments to rid the body of any and all cancer cells. But it’s the results of the PET-CT scan that every patient and their family members anxiously await for, because that’s when they receive the news that the treatments worked and they are now ‘cancer free’. If a cancer patient undergoes major or radical surgery to remove cancerous organs or body parts…one of the first pieces of news you want to hear when coming out of surgery is to be told by a confident doctor… that they ‘got it all’. Being told that they ‘got most of it’…or to be informed that despite surgery and follow up chemo or radiation treatments that there were still ‘some’ cancer cells detected in your blood work…would not be a source of great comfort to anyone. Care to guess why that might be?  I’m no expert at this but we...

  Here is an over-simplified picture of what I have spent the past five years trying to convey from all these Bible lessons with plenty of scripture included to support what I share. God set a law in place which He expects to be obeyed, and it can best be summed up like this: We are either going to surrender to His Lordship and allow Him to replicate His divine nature in us so that we can manifest His love to the world…or we will be destroyed. I don’t know that I could make it any plainer than that. We are told that God is ‘long-suffering’ towards us, ‘not wanting any to perish but for all to come to repentance’ (2 Pet. 3:9). It is His desire for “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Ti. 2:4) And ‘unless we repent…we will all likewise…perish’. – Jesus (Luke 13:3,5). Oh, and here’s a news-flash in case anyone forgot this little nugget of truth taught by Jesus: He gave us a ‘new commandment, that we love one another as He loved us’…and…’by this will all...

  The apostle Paul wrote: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law…having become a curse for us…” (Col. 3:13). Before you go and pop the cork on that bottle of champagne upon hearing this news regarding what Christ did…may I challenge you to take a moment to consider this: who was Paul referring to there when he mentions….'us'? Who are the ones that are actually included in that great news…about being ‘redeemed from the curse’? I only do that because we know how easy it is for people to ‘jump to conclusions’ when they read various scriptures and just automatically ‘assume’…it applies to them, especially when it comes to being on the receiving end of blessings and/or good news. How many people are we told in Matt. 7:22 will ‘come in that day’…when they stand before God and just presume they are ‘in’ as they list all those glorious works they did in ‘His name’, only to discover that Jesus ‘never knew them’? (Matt. 7:23) And how many people did Jesus imply would be on th...

  Those who are followers of Jesus have been instructed (commanded actually) to deal with their ‘old man’…or their sinful flesh nature in the most severe way: as in put it to death! (Col. 3:5-9) We were not advised to consider ‘dialing it down, putting it on a leash, or in a cage’. We were told it ‘must die’…and stay dead. And those who truly belong to Jesus and hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:27)…have done this very thing. They 'have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24). Did you notice that is written as ‘past tense’? We are told by Jesus that ‘not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of His Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21). We also learn in scripture that it is those who are ‘led by His Spirit’ that are the true ‘children of God’ (Rom. 8:14). We learn that those who ‘walk in the Spirit will NOT fulfill the lusts of the flesh (nature), since they are contrary to one another (Gal. 5...

  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” – Jesus (Matt. 7:21) “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified (put to death) the flesh with its passions and desires.” – Paul (Gal. 5:24) Try as you may (and many have)…you just can’t conveniently toss those statements aside as if they ‘don’t apply to us today’. They were written down in our Bibles for a purpose; and if for no other reason…hopefully to get our attention and prompt us to dive deeper into God’s word to gain more clarification and understanding. Do you know what I have come to learn over the years? When people are taught to believe a false doctrine… it has this eerie effect on sincere believers where they can be quick to dismiss other scriptures that don’t ‘fit’ with what they have been taught to believe. Remember - most deception will have a thread of truth interwoven through it…which is what makes false teachings so deceptive. ...