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  When you ‘once walked’...according to the course or ways of this world...you were ‘dead in sin’...(Eph. 2:1-2); emphasis placed here on the past tense of ‘once walked’. This is how you use to walk...meaning you don’t walk this way anymore. These words were addressed to those who have been ‘made alive’ when they repented and turned from darkness and came to the light which is found only in Jesus. Apart from Him we have no life (spiritual) and we must come to Him in order to receive this God giving ‘life’ (John 5:40; 10:10). Friends...not only is it imperative that we come to Him, but we must also ‘remain’ ...in Him, or as John 15:1-8 points out...we must continue to ‘abide’ in Him. How else can one sustain this God kind of life apart from Him? How long can an child in its mother’s womb continue to develop, grow, and thrive without remaining attached to the umbilical cord? If for whatever reason that cord became detached, that growing child within the womb would not survive. Se...
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  If you are among the many throngs of people today who are truly in search of answers, trying to make sense of the chaotic and often ‘dark’ world that we live in, then I don’t know of any better verses to point you to from the Bible than the ones I touched on the other day, 1 John 5:19, Acts 26:18; Rev. 12:9...and the one I have included here below, found in Eph. 2:1-3. “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” I have referenced this passage regularly here over the past few years and want to come back and ‘unpack it’ even more today, because there is so much to be gleaned from it that can bring so much clarity and...
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  It is an age-old question that humanity has wrestled with and sought to answer – ‘What is missing in my life’? Perhaps you have heard it phrased this way: “Who am I ...and why am I here?” It has been described as a ‘gnawing void within’... in which man has pursued multiple paths in order to fill that void. I’ve heard it described as the ‘God hole in our hearts’ that can only be filled by the One who created us. Sadly, so many people tend to pursue every other avenue and exhaust all other options before coming to the conclusion that ‘God’ really is that ‘missing piece’. Needless to say, ‘many’ folks never do arrive at that revelation, according to Jesus (Matt. 7:13-14). What is equally tragic, if not worse... is the number of people who ‘thought they had tried God’, but ended up with a counterfeit version, or misleading ‘gospel’ that only offered up an empty religion which never led to true, abundant ‘life’ (or salvation). So our ongoing struggle to fill that void has usually ...
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  “We know...that whoever is born of God...does not sin...and the ‘wicked one’ does not touch him. We also know...that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:18-19) If I was to 'question' anything there in those two statements, it would be the fact that there seems to be many people today who don’t....’know’ those things John writes about. I also suspect far too many people automatically assume they are in that group described as ‘we’. The first statement seems to be a bigger point of contention for many professing believers today, about ‘no longer sinning’; but it’s the second point of ‘assumed knowledge’ that I want to focus on today; and it’s a piece of important ‘information’ that I find myself circling back to often to address and remind us all - this world is under the sway or influence of a demonic force whom we know as ‘Satan’ or ‘the devil’ (Rev. 12:9). I know Flip Wilson made light of this truth back in the late 60’s wit...
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  “I was blind but now I see...” How many times over the span of your life have you sang that line from the song, ‘Amazing Grace’...or at least have heard it sung? Now, imagine adding another stanza to that line that goes something like this... “I was blind but now I see...and yet I still run into trees and walls and trip over things because ‘my spirit sees but my flesh is weak and won’t really see until I get to heaven’. Do what? That...is exactly what a multitude of professing ‘believers’ subscribe to these days to hear them explain their theology. Now don’t get me wrong...I ‘get’ where they are coming from. I too...’used’ to believe that way, basically because that is what I was always taught to believe. We humans have a bad habit of doing lots of things (or believing things) because that’s the way we’ve always done it. I know that the subject of ‘English’ which we all had to take in school was not a favorite for many students, but there really were a lot of important thing...
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  “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” “Everybody sins.” “We are just saints who sin.” Friends...we have normalized this conduct and behavior amongst ourselves (in the ‘church’) for so long now...why would we expect anything different? In fact, we’ve become so adapted to this mindset...that to suggest otherwise will quickly earn you the label of ‘heretic’. Tell you what...while you look up the verses in your Bible for those three statements above, let me offer you these verses real quick – ‘Whoever abides in Him (Jesus) does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him...He who sins is of the devil.” (1 John 3:6-8) “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin...” (1 John 5:18) “He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.” (1 Pet. 4:1-2) “Most assuredly, I say to you...whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, and a slave does not abide in t...
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  Sin is our problem, and Jesus is the cure. And let me be perfectly clear- Jesus is not some cheap band-aid either, where you continue to ‘slap one on’ to cover it up every time you do sin. If we truly understood and believed in our hearts what it actually means to be ‘set free from sin’ (Rom. 6:18,22; John 8:34-36), it would change everything about the way you live and walk, day in and day out. It’s amazing how many people tend to read 1 John 2:1 as saying ‘when you sin’, since it actually reads ‘IF’...you sin...and then we are reminded that we have an advocate to whom we can run to 'if' we do. When I say that Jesus is the ‘cure’, I should also point out that it is not some complicated and expensive surgery one has to undergo in order to find this cure or freedom. Well, I suppose the case could be made that it is a bit on the ‘costly’ side, since Jesus does lay out it will cost us our ‘lives’ (Luke 9:23; 14:25-33), but not in the way you might think. There is no getting aro...
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