Psalm 143:2 Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you. In the Overview, Bryan referred to this as “The Sinful Condition of Man after the Fall into Sin”. The Doctrines of Grace refer to this as Total Depravity, where depravity is defined as Moral Perversion, an Impairment of Virtue or Moral Principles. Some synonyms for Total might be: Comprehensive Thorough Utter Exhaustive Pervasive I state, “You are Utterly Sinful, your Moral Perversion is comprehensive, you suffer a thorough impairment of virtue, and a pervasive impairment...
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FLOYD DOUD SHAFER Christianity Today, March 27, 1961
There was a time, about three generations ago, when the minister was known as the parson. Parson, in those days, was not a nickname, but an honorific title, and it meant The Person. More often than not the parson was the best educated man in the community and he ranked with the physician and the pedagogue, and the lawyer in eminence. But our time has seen a complete switch in this situation. The minister is no longer a parson. The advent of a highly educated public has put the minister close to the bottom of the listings in educated persons....
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The way we live our lives demonstrate more clearly what we believe about the Bible and God than anything we say. Many call themselves Christians, 3/5 of Americans claim to be personally committed to Christ. Matthew 7:21-23 is a clear example of why we need to believe what the Bible teaches and live it, rather than claim we believe what the Bible teaches yet continue to live in opposition to those teachings. Does your life reflect what you claim to believe? Do you keep Christ's commandments and abide in His love? Are there any areas of your life that are in opposition to Scripture and Christ's...
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(Mathew 5:13-16) To paraphrase Matthew Henry, ˜Mankind, wallowing in wickedness, is piled up as an enormous heap, prepared to putrefy. However, Christ has sent us that by our lives mankind may be seasoned with grace and love. If an individual can take up the profession of Christ, and yet remain loveless, no other doctrine, no other means, can make that individual profitable. Our light must shine, by doing such good works as others may see. What is between God and our souls, must be kept to ourselves; but that which is of itself open to the sight of men, we must study to make suitable to our profession...
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So Rob made soup from the ham bone, beans, carrots, leaks, celery, oyster crackers and yummm yummm good. Good soup! Come on over and have some.
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Well, today for Christmas Rob got me a laptop. Merry Christmas to me. The kids had a good day too!
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Compassion - Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.) Witness - a. One who can give a firsthand account of something seen, heard, or experienced. b. One who furnishes evidence.) Our God is a God of compassion; He has a deep awareness of our suffering coupled with the desire to relieve it. He sent His Son in order to provide the relief for our suffering! As Christians, we who have experienced this relief are capable of giving a firsthand account of what we have seen, heard, and experienced through Christ. We have even established that Christ has commanded...
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Jacob came over yesterday and we cooked three cheesecakes for Christmas. We used the Cheesecake Factory Recipe (below) and I worked with Jacob to make the first cheesecake, then left him and Samantha to make the other two. We invited Tommy and Jodi to join us for dinner at Hillbilly’s Steak & BBQ, after which we returned to the house to enjoy said Cheesecake, with some home made blueberry topping! It was a very satisfying experience – cooking, eating, eating too much – this is what holiday’s are made for, right? ...
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Christ provides us with a number of universal commands (worship\serve God, pray at all times, teach\disciple others, good works, etc.), these are commands that are common to all disciples of Christ and are not in any way restricted to some Christians. Our Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) and Christ's last recorded words before ascension, "you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8b) are excellent examples of this command. In Matthew 28 Christ was speaking directly to the eleven Disciples and in Acts 1 to the Apostles...
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This is my testimony. There is one God. The Bible is God Breathed, every word of it is true and it is God's message to us about Himself. He has revealed Himself to mankind through the Scriptures in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God created the cosmos, nothing has been or ever will be created outside of Him. God created man, in His image, and man once communed with God freely. Man broke that communion by disobeying God, and since then, every human ever born was born out of communion with God.
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