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Don’t Park By Your Past Experiences!
I will go on… 2 Corinthians 12:1. # She is in her sixties, ‘brought up’ in the church, and religion has been an important part of her weekly diet. But her ‘faith’ has not brought her a richer, fuller life. She ‘went forward’ as a young person during an evangelistic crusade, but she has never […]
Surprise And Poverty
God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance… He gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever. 2 Corinthians 9:9. The ‘poor’ in the Bible are not merely those with no money. They are those whose insecurity and poverty because they sometimes – or often – have no roof over their heads […]
Religious Experiences Come In Many Varieties
Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Acts 2:2. Religious experiences, particularly those with a high emotional content, are very complex. Anglo-Saxons are generally afraid of their emotions. They have a ‘reserved’ approach to worship, and a somewhat […]
Press On, Don’t Look Back
This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on… Philippians 3:13, 14. Paul wrote those words from prison. He’d been arrested in Jerusalem, detained for two years in Caesarea, and was then sent to Rome to await trial before the emperor. And so after four […]
Agony And Ecstasy (1)
I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up into the third heaven… 2 Corinthians 12: 2,7. Here Paul describes his greatest ‘agony and ecstasy’. Because his opponents were bragging about their visions and experiences, and claiming as a result to be ‘one up’ on the apostle, Paul very reluctantly describes […]
Surprised In The Dark
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24. You may think God’s best saints rarely if ever suffer confusion or bewilderment or disillusion. Not so. They sometimes feel keenly a sense of failure; they often have […]
Agony And Ecstasy (2)
To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me. 2 Corinthians 12: 2,7. It happened fourteen years before. Paul was ‘caught up’ to the ‘third heaven’, Paradise. He isn’t sure whether he was conscious or asleep, whether ‘in the body or out of it’. The New Testament does not tell us much […]
What Happiness Is Not
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread… Psalm 1:1. Just about everybody wants to be happy. You dream of happiness, you plan for it, and perhaps pay any price to achieve it. Searching for happiness, one person will try to make a lot […]
Praise The Lord!
Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 106:1. Oliver Cromwell, as he neared the end of his memorable life, asked his weeping friends, ‘Is there no one here who will praise the Lord?’ Five well-known words are associated etymologically with ‘praise’: price, […]
What Is Happiness?
Happy are all who take refuge in [the Lord]. Psalm 2:11. Happiness is lots of things, but primarily three: * Happiness is enjoying living with yourself. It’s the art of ‘being yourself’. Robert Louis Stevenson once said, ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end […]
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