Saturday, August 31, 2013

The Greatest Commandment

Hello to Everyone:

I would like to look at Matthew 22:37-40, which reads - 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”  In the last 2 or 3 weeks I've been looking at why and how we are to follow Jesus on a daily basis.  In today's post I would like to add another reason why we should follow Jesus's teaching.  The very first commandment is that we should Love God the Father with all your heart, soul, and mind.  In anything that we do our say should be to Love God for who he is and what he has done for us, by following Jesus's teaching we will show our love for God in that special way of becoming like his son Jesus.
    The second commandment is as important as the first.  We are to love ourselves and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  If we love our neighbor we will make sure that are neighbors are safe and secury.  If our neighbor asks for a bit to eat we feed him if he needs a ride to the hospital we make sure he gets there.  Anything that we can do to help our neighbor to show him how mush we care for him is the theme of this second commandment.  But I do think that when we our helping our neighbor out physical we need to help him out spiritual also, we need to share how a good God has helped us out in our walk with Jesus, and then let the Holy Spirit to work on the neighbor the rest of the time.  When we share God to our neighbor we are showing how we care for his spirit and soul.
    Well until later have a good day.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Jesus Teaches

Good Day To Everyone:

    I would like to look at Matthew 4:18-22, which reads - 18 And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19 Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 They immediately left their nets and followed Him.

21 Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

This part of Matthew's Gospel is where Jesus started his ministry of calling and teaching his disciples.  I would like to point out when Jesus called, his disciples listened and they did follow him.  When a person follows Jesus he must follow him all the way, if Jesus wants you to give up on what you own, then you must give up like the sons of Zebedee did, they left there fishing business, to follow Jesus. 

Jesus taught his disciples using different means.  Some of those means where story telling, lecturing, discussions and Q&A with his disciples.  To follow Jesus you must follow his examples of what he taught, some of which are to obay Jesus commandments, to pray in a special way, to follow what Jesus had to say, and to serve or to help when needed.

In the next 3 or 4 weeks I will being looking more closely at these four instructions that Jesus gave his disciples.  Until then I hope you all have a good day.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Pick Up Your Cross And Follow Me!

Hello To Everyone:

I would like to look at Luke 9:23 - Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

In my last post we found out that the God set up a system that all saved people must be like his son Jesus Christ.  In this post I want to start showing how that process is to take place. 

Lets now look at our first verse of this post, Luke 9:23.  If you can see its broken down into 4 sections.  The 1st section is where Jesus is asking the question "If anyone desires to come after me".  Jesus knows what God wants of his children after they get saved, and because of this Jesus knows he can not forse the issue, this is why salvation is a free gift.  So as a free gift, Jesus asks the question "If", not you must but "If", he knows that people are going to follow him and he want's to show them how to do it. 

The 2nd section Jesus wants us to deny ourself's.  What he is saying is that we must forget what we did in the past and to start fresh following his way of life.  This process is not easy but if we want to follow Jesus we must start turning off our old self and start working on a new self.

The 3rd section Jesus is telling us how to start this process of turning our life around.  If you remember God made man in his image.  We also know that God is a spirit and does not have a physical body as we know of.  The image that God made was our inside soul or our spirit in his image.  Of course this was all before Adam and Eve mested up God's plans.  Ever since our sinful fall God has been working with man to fix us up the way he wants us to be, this is why we must take up our cross on a daily basis, yes I mean we need to do this ever day of our physical life.  When I think of carring a cross, I think of it being used for my death on it.  This is some what true, to what we have to do spiritally speaking.  Our old spirit the one that allways sinned and turned from God, had to be put to death so we can take the shape of the Holy Spirit that came to live with us when we asked God into our lives.  By taking up our cross and dieing on a daily basis then the Holy Spirit can be in charge of our spirit instead of our old spirit would be in charge.  The Apostle Paul looked at this process as a different challenge.  Lets look at 2 Timothy 4:7,8 -  I have  fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.  In this passage St Paul is running a race, and if he wins then there is a crown given to him or anyone whom wins the race, gets a crown from the Lord Jesus in due time.  Either we carry a cross or we run a race, we as christians has a daily job of changing who we are into what God the Father wants us to be.

The 4th and last section is Jesus telling us we need to do all of these things and then to follow his examples for a better life.

In my next post I will be continuing our daily walk with the Lord Jesus.  Until then have a good day.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Calvinism


Good Day To All Of You.  I haven’t been around lately for posting, but thank God I’m back.  In the last 5 or 6 months I’ve been fighting with my consciousness  on a bible topic.  The topic that I’ve been fighting with is brought up by John Calvin, a theologian that had a different view point of salvation from that of what I was taught from the bible.

          I would like to give my thought on the verse that Mr Calvin uses to back up his way of thinking.  The verse comes from Romans 8:29, which reads, 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Mr Calvin belives that seeing that God does know very thing that happens before it does happen, that God will pick and choose who will be saved before the time of that person being saved.  I had the problem with that way of thinking because if that was true than why did Jesus die on the cross.  It would be to easy for God to say you’re a good person and you’re a bad person even before they where born into this world.  I’m sorry I can’t believe that the passage was saying that.  I see it as God set up this world, in the beginning of time to follow a life style pleasing to God.  We all know that Adam and Eve messed that life up and we have the world as it is today.  God wants his children that truly except Jesus Christ as there personal savior, to live a life style very close to the one that Adam and Eve had at the beginning of time.  God wants us to follow Jesus and use his example of different things that Jesus did when he walked the earth before his death on the cross.  If we followed what Jesus taught then we can be like Jesus is today a son of God the Father.

I don’t know about you but I would like to be one of God’s children, I just have to keep on working at it daily.  In the next few weeks I would be writing about how to follow Jesus so we to can be son’s of God.