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Peter said that suffering is normal.  Was Peter weird or what? He said that we should look for suffering or that we should not be surprised when it comes. I don't know about you but I have never suffered for my faith. And I haven't gone looking for suffering either.  Nobody wants to suffer. Paul says that we should try to live a peaceful life with everyone. I think that most in the West have looked to do just that. We want to avoid conflict with everyone. The problem is that when we live godly lives we won't need to look for suffering and persecution. It will come looking for us. Our coworkers will see our godly behavior and they will feel convicted of their ungodly lives. That guilt won't last too long before it becomes hatred directed towards us.  Satan hates God and everything related to his glory. We were created to bring God glory, so when we give up our sinful lifestyles to be like Christ we will feel the brunt of Satan's attacks. The problem is that there are...

What often happens in sudden situations is that we lose our heads. Not literally, of course, but we don't make good decisions when we are surprised by sudden changes. If we are not careful, we can mistake those quick events and make rash moves that cost us our future.  You might have thought that Paul had done that if you were sitting beside him as he wrote his last letter to Timothy. After all, it was he that was in prison. Why would someone end up in jail if he didn't deserve it? Well, that is another story.  In his second letter to Timothy, Paul is warning his son in the faith of things coming his way. Timothy would need to be aware of the following.  "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations,...

During the years, I have been in a few rest homes. Some say that I belong in one right now. Haha, very funny. However, when we think of a rest home, ugly and disgusting smells invade our olfactory nerve. We think of multiple wheelchairs and hunkered over souls shuffling down a lonely and sparse, and empty hall.  If we focus on rest homes, we might get depressed. For, rest homes are similar to our so-called humane societies. The main difference is that we don't "put down" the aged. Yet. Rest homes are where we put the discarded of society. Those old shufflers are out of our sight and thus out of our daily lives and thoughts. They're not gone, just left out.  What is the Bible's solution to this problem? Look here in 1 Timothy 5:4, "But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God." WHAT...

2 Chronicles 36:23 "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: "'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them.'" Are you worried about what is going on these days in world politics? Is China in charge? Or is the United States? Will our money be worthless in just a few years or months? Will the communists or Islamists take over the 50 states? And would the world be happy if they did?  It is not that we should keep our heads in the sand or cry wolf! However, there is a sense in which many Americans have created an Americanization of Theology that doesn’t exist. We think that we can save Israel from destruction. We believe that without us, the world would cease to function. Or we see the dollar as the most potent currency that needs to be solvent, or the world will screech to a halt.  The last...

1 Timothy 1:12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.   If you have the privilege of serving God, then it is because he considered you trustworthy. Have you ever stopped to think about that?  Before you get a big head about that, though, you might want to consider this; it is all about God and not you. God used a lump of clay to make the first man. Then, he formed and shaped that man into his image. Adam was the crowning creation. His beginning, however, was dirty. And it didn't take long for Adam to return to the mud. He soon disobeyed the only rule that existed and not long afterward returned to dust.  The fact that anyone might be considered worthy of service is again all about God and not you. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul goes through an interesting list of sinners to describe the wonder of God's choice. At the end of his list, he makes an incredible statement. He says that he, Paul, was the w...

1 Timothy 1:3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer   Are you a type-A person who likes to lead or a type B who likes to be lead? If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, in some áreas of life, we have no choice in the matter. We must take a stand and command. When false doctrines come our way, we must command the false teacher to stop! There is no place for jellyfish spines in such cases. The doctrines of the Bible are worth defending, and there are plenty of examples of people in the Bible who defended those teachings to their death. Would you know a Bible doctrine when you saw one? Would you know how and why to defend them? If not, you need to get to work and make your list of the fundamentals of the faith. Then speak with authority in their defense.  Here are a few of the doctrines that you must have on your list: God created everything He is sovereign - He is  all-...

Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.   What was it that Eve ate? How did it look, smell and taste? Why was Eve attracted to it in the first place?  Many think that it was an apple because they have seen a painting of Eve with one in her hand. Could it have been a lemon? And thus, these days, the lemon is so sour because it played in the biggest tragedy in history. IDK just wondering It really doesn't matter what fruit it was because it was what it represented that was important. It was that thing that suddenly Eve wanted. She was in a perfect place with a perfect body, a perfect husband by her side, and in a garden where weeds or bugs didn't exist. Yet when faced with the temptation of the forbidden fruit and all that it seemed to promise, she fell for the bait.  She rebelled against ...