The Acts of the Holy Spirit

So at our small group on Wednesday we started reading the Acts of the Apostles. This details the early years of the church. One thing we all took notice of was that this was in fact the Acts of the Holy Spirit more so than the Acts of the Apostles.

So the question is do you have the power of the Spirit residing in you? If you don't there is a simple remedy.

1. If you are a Christian, all you need to do is pray for a recharging or refilling of the Holy Spirit each day. When you do this you will be amazed at the things you can do to further the Kingdom of Heaven that you thought were out of your comfort zone or greater than your capabilities. Certainly the Apostles couldn't have achieved the success they experienced without a daily filling power of the Holy Spirit.

2. If you are not a Christian, there is a dormant power available to you just waiting to be called into action. The Spirit can help to inspire you to search out a deeper understanding of why you are here, why there is a God and so on. With this Spirit's urging the hope and prayer is you will accept the gift of salvation paid for at the Cross of Christ. Then this dormant powerful Spirit can be enacted in your life and you too can have the indwelling and the filling of the Holy Spirit to allow your life to transform in ways you never dreamed possible.

Please take some time to ask questions, seek out why these Christians say Jesus is the only way to salvation. Ask the questions about why do I need salvation, what is sin and so forth. If you find someone willing to listen and work with you it is my sincere hope that upon hearing the message of the gospel you will accept fully what it says and give your life to Christ.

Have a great weekend!

I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me."
                                   -John 14:6-

The Parachute of Faith

So tonight, stirred on by a great meeting with some friends, I was led to this little example to sum up faith...well at least as well as I can explain it.

Okay so first lets envision you were duped into going on a skydiving trip with a few friends. You are super terrified of jumping out of a plane not to mention you are scared of heights so jumping out of a plane at any height greater than 3 feet is too much for you to bear.

You decide to do some research about skydiving and the parachutes that will help to ensure your safe landing on terra firma. You study the weight capacity of the parachute, the oxygen level when you jump from the plane, you study the success rate of jumpers landing without splattering all over the ground and so on.

The day of the jump is here and you have prepared yourself with all the information possible and you have rehearsed what the jump will look like but still you are not settled because you have no way of knowing whether or not you will land safely. Now in an ideal world, like in the movie Back to the Future, you can travel to the future and verify that you actually land safely.

So you are standing there all ready to go. You have thought through this but you realize again you can't know for sure so you hold on to the side as you jump. Did you really let go and trust in the parachute to do its job?

Maybe you jump and you wait and wait and wait for the parachute to open itself, eventually you hit the ground having not pulled the cord to release the chute and well you guess what happens to you.

But on the other hand maybe you let go of the side, jump and when the time is right pull the string and glide safely to the earth below you. You did it! You took the leap of faith and trusted in the parachute and it didn't let you down.

Here is where I was going with this. We can reason, research and do all the intellectual things involved in attempting to know God, just like we did before our skydiving trip.

Eventually we come to the point where we realize we cannot reason and research anymore because we realize that knowing God is more than just reason and fact. There is a huge chasm that seperates us from God and eventually we have to jump.

Don't jump holding on to the facts that led you this far thinking that becasue you still cling to you reason that faith will lead you to the answer while you never let faith actually do its thing and become  well, faith.

Also, don't just jump into faith waiting for God to do something for you before you actually try to pull the parachute of faith for yourself, if you do this you will wait and wait and wait until splat...its too late.

Instead jump, pull the string and let the faith you say you have guide the parachute open and land safely in the arms of the Savior.

Are you willing to jump in faith for God? It is my sincere prayer that you are... I will be praying for you all that God's divine parachute opens and guides you safely home!

Why did he do that?

Have you ever just sat around wondering why something happened a particular way it did?

Why did that car cut me off?

Why did the waitress not hear me ask for some more water?

Why did I throw my back out just bending over?

So we can ask a bunch of why's and this week I found myself finally resolving a why for myself.

I was reading the story of the Exodus and the encounters between Moses and Pharaoh. It struck me as strange why God would purposely harden the heart of Pharaoh. I realize in my limited knowledge as a human I cannot fully perceive of what it must be like to have supreme power and knowingly make decisions that will effect the outcomes of certain lives in different ways. But then it struck me...God did this because of the reaction that it would cause and the response that would come from the Israelites.

Go with me here on a small journey and picture if you will the story of the Exodus if God had not hardened Raamses heart.

As Moses approaches the people of Israel full of strife he realizes he must do something, he comes to Pharaoh and demands that he let his people go. Pharaoh laughs him off and the plagues begin. After a few of the plagues on the land Pharaoh realizes that the Hebrews have a powerful voice and they need to be released and allowed not to be a curse on the land of Egypt any longer. Pharaoh in his infinite wisdom and grace allows the people to go into the wilderness as Moses requests and Israel begins her journey to the promised land. Here is where the story takes the turn. In recognizing the graciousness of the Pharaoh instead of turning their praise to the God in heaven they turn their love and admiration back to Pharaoh for the mercy he showed them. They actually build statues to him and volunteer to return to live and worship Pharaoh in the land from which they were once slaves.

What could go wrong with that???

How about everything and anything...that's a dead-end road for the Hebrews. In worshiping a man they would have most certainly doomed their existence in Egypt and probably have been wiped off the face of the earth after generations of slavery and euthanasia.

However, the Lord came to the rescue in history. He did harden Pharaohs heart and the result, the people left the land triumphantly. They took riches from the land, and who got the praise, not Pharaoh, not Moses but God. Who did the people worship, God...at least for a little while but that's for another time!

The point, in God's infinite and divine foreknowledge and middle-knowledge, He could see the outcome either way it went down and he knew how his people would respond. In order to truly allow them to leave the land he had to put in front of them the choices that would lead to their ultimate freedom and he had to harden Pharaoh's heart. No one deserves slavery and God saw to it that this people would be freed from it. This was much like in our own country, God intervened in the lives of the Christians who moved a country to abolish slavery through President Lincoln's decree.

Why did he do that...to give peace to His people and he can do the same for you if you call on His name accept him with faith and follow His word and do as He says. Then you can be assured of the gift of Salvation. Will you do that today?

I sincerly hope so!

Have a great weekend all!

The Human Predicament

Well, this morning I just wanted to touch on something that if you're an Atheist or a Christian or really anything professing a faith should be concerned about (yes I am saying Atheist's have faith based reasons for believing what they do).


The question is what happens to us when we die? Where do we go? Do we cease to exist?


The way you answer this question should have a dramatic impact on how you live your life.


We as humans, according to a Naturalistic (atheist) worldview, are merely a chance directed by natural selection evolved from a primordial soup on a distant planet in a vast, possibly infinitely regressing and expanding universe. I say possibly here because most scientist still agree with a cosmic singularity of the universe, namely the Big Bang.


The end result of this is you are here on earth existing for maybe 100 years, and then you are going back into nothingness. But that fate doesn't just await you, it awaits the entire planet, which, as is theorized by most scientist, will ultimately end up in a heat death where the planet will simply grow cold and disintegrate spreading our cosmic garbage across the ever expanding universe into infinite space.


What does this sort of view lend to your ultimate significance, value and purpose of life. In truth it lends nothing to any of the afore mentioned aspects of life.


1. In regards to Ultimate Significance, basically what does it matter if you find a cure for cancer, or help to bring peace into the middle east, if your life and ultimately the lives of other generations and the earth itself cease to exist in the future the question is left to be answered, "So What?" Why bother, it all goes to nothingness.


2. In regards to Ultimate Value, what does it matter if you try to life a morally upright and correct life. Who determines your right and wrong, if everything is relative then my goods are just as right as yours are even though you don't agree with my anti-hot dog policy, you have to accept it because its my truth and its right to me. Either way what does that matter, when I will leave this world and cease to exist, why shouldn't I do as I please, steal, cheat, rob, kill. It makes no difference what I do since I will not be held responsible in the next life for anything I do here on earth I merely go the way of Hitler and Ghandi, into nothing.


3. Lastly in regards to Ultimate Purpose, if we are nothing more than "electro-chemicals" as Richard Dawkins puts it then we aren't special at all. We have no purpose or importance, we are just a random chance occurrence and our lives will end the same way they started back to non-existence, where is the purpose in living a life like that?


Bottom line is this, without God and Immortality our lives lack all the significance, value and purpose they need for making this present life worth living and fighting for.


As French Mathematician and Physicist Blaise Pascal puts it in his Wager Argument, "...when the odds that God exists are even, then the prudent man will gamble that God exists. This is a wager that all men must take-the game is in progress and a bet must be laid. There is no opting out: you have already joined the game. Which then will you choose--that God exists or that he does not?"


According to William Lane Craig, "Pascal argues that since the odds are even, reason is not violated in making either choice; so reason cannot determine which bet to make. Therefore, the choice should be made pragmatically in terms of maximizing one's happiness. If one wagers that God exists and he does, one has gained eternal life and infinite happiness. If he does not exist, one has lost nothing. On the other hand, if one wagers that God does not exist and he does, then one has suffered infinite loss. If he does not in fact exist, then one has gained nothing. Hence, the only prudent choice is to believe that God exists."


This point of view on God has become known as a "Properly Basic Belief" on which Alvin Plantinga has based his Reformed Epistemology.


So which will you choose?


I have chosen the first and the "Properly Basic Belief." I have nothing to lose and eternity to gain, which do you have?

The Lord is My Rock!

So reading this morning in the great book of II Samuel I came to chapter 22. This chapter holds a song of David to his beloved Lord God Almighty. This song is well written and the first few verses struck a chord in my heart so I figured why not stop and write them and share them with my internet friends. Here they are as I read them:

"...The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in Him will I trust: He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, My high tower, and my refuge; My savior; Thou savest me from violence. I will call on the name of the LORD, Who is worthy to be praised..."
                                 -II Samuel 22:2-4 KJV-


Just sit with those words and descriptions of God:
Rock
Deliverer
Shield
Refuge
High Tower
Savior

With descriptions like these its no wonder our Lord God Almighty is able to lift us up when we are weak, comfort us when we are broken and feed us when we are hungry.

It is good to give thanks and praise to the one who is worthy of it!

It is my prayer that you would do so today. OH PRAISE HIM...HE IS HOLY!