Ideas about the Kingdom of the Heavens around us and the unity of believers in Christ within it
When Jesus said that the son of man has power to forgive sins on Earth, he was referring to his humanity–and ours. God has already forgiven. Like Jesus, we have the power–and the mission–to offer forgiveness on Earth.
My forgiveness or unforgiveness of you has real power. If I hold onto a grudge against you, or you hold onto a grudge against me, it binds both of us, limits the Body of Christ, and affects the whole world, until it is released. So we must properly deal with grudges.
The modern emphasis on first identifying my “gift” so that I may then “help” God develop it gets the matter exactly backwards. The important thing isn’t identifying my gift, it is offering my body as a living sacrifice so that the Spirit may exercise any gift He chooses through me. Then any gift I am observed to be actually exercising can be identified as my gift, and its exercise will be genuine and have God’s power.
A God who Speaks, Desire to have our own way, Disrespecting poor believers, Divisions in the Church, God Speaks to Us, God's purpose for us, Historical Background, In the Church, Meaning of Unity, Other Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Personal Background, Personality cults, Prophecy, Through others, Through teachers, Through the church, To be his ambassadors, To bear fruit, To live in unity
Linked text accompanying the You Tube video with the same name. God calls us. God’s call presents neither a question of what human has “authority” nor of human “leadership,” but of God’s right to make free use of what He gives.
A God who Speaks, Authority Contests, Divisions in the Church, God Acts by Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God's purpose for us, God's Voice, His Children, His Friends, Must Trust God to Enter, Peril of Seeking Power, The Kingdom is all around us, The Kingdom is all around us, The Kingdom of the Heavens, To be his ambassadors, To be in his image
Linked text to accompany the third in a series of videos about God’s gifts and callings for people, which he sometimes gives to notorious evildoers. Discusses Moses, King David and Saul of Tarsus, who literally got away with murder. Or did they?
A God who Speaks, Consequences, Discipline or Correction, forgiveness and mercy, Forgiveness and Unforgiveness, God is Love, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God was never our enemy, God's rationality, Merit, patience, Reconciliation, Repentance, Restoration of God's Image, Salvation, Sin, The Problem of Evil
Introduction to the historic process by which the Early Church, a collection of outcasts bound together by a personal relationship with Jesus, within a few centuries became the chief bastion of worldly power and order held together by legally enforced adherence to a creed.
I write this post to myself. I was once a very angry man. But I believed I now had anger under control. More recently, I’m not so sure. Manipulative people and manipulative institutions both deliberately goad the anger of those they want to control–anger is a great motivator. The media, celebrities, politicians, organizations and advertisers do the same thing. Other people, though, habitually but unconsciously manipulate by continually rehearsing their angry reveries for others to hear, wishing either to bring their hearers into their angry world or to intimidate by fear of what they might do in anger. And I am weak to all of these ploys. So I present the following study, which consists only of quotations from Scripture about human anger, its causes and antidote.
Changed treatment of each other, Conversation with others, Desire to have our own way, Divisions in the Church, Emotions, Forgive as we forgive, forgiveness and mercy, Forgiveness and Unforgiveness, Free will, God is Love, God's purpose for us, His Children, Human Rationality, Injustice and Lawsuits, Language and Speech, patience, Repentance, Restoration of God's Image, Restoration of our Relationships, Salvation, To be his ambassadors, To live in unity
States the hypothesis that one of the drivers of historical change is repeated spiritual trauma affecting conquered or subjugated cultural groups in some specific areas of the world where movements often start.
Most of the currents of modern Western history can ultimately be traced to the well-meaning decisions of Christian leaders in the early centuries to seek political sponsorship. This led to the inversion of the Gospel message, forced exile of “heretics,” the rise of Islam through the influence of exiled “heretics,” and most of the subsequent upheavals in the Western world.
A God who Speaks, Authority Contests, Changed treatment of each other, Compulsory Christianity, Desire to have our own way, Disrespecting poor believers, Divisions in the Church, Ethnic Division, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, Heresy, Islam and Christianity, Islam as a Consequence, Peril of Seeking Power, Peril of Seeking Respectability, Religious violence and persecution, Repentance, Salvation, Social control and statecraft, Through the church, Truth and Falsehood, Wars as consequences, What is sin?
In this post, I give a short, one web page, summary of what I believe, in language as simple as I can manage. It gives only a quick, “big picture” of my understanding of God, my relationship to him, and my role on Earth. Comments are invited.
Church purpose versus church growth, Complex unity, Conversation with God, Divisions in the Church, Eternity, Free will, God Acts by Speaking, God is Love, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God was never our enemy, God's Existence and Nature, God's purpose for us, God's rationality, God's sovereignty, His Children, His Friends, Immanence, Islam as a Consequence, Language and Speech, Male and female, Merit, Omnipresence, Reconciliation, Refusing to hear, Regeneration, Rejecting God, Repentance, Restoration of God's Image, Salvation, Show us the Way of Truth, Sin, Sins versus sin, The Invisible God's Self-Existence, The Kingdom of the Heavens, The Problem of Evil, To be his ambassadors, To be in his image, To live in unity, Transcendence, Trinity, Ultimate reality, Unity, Wars as consequences, What is God's Word, What is sin?