Category Archives: 1 Corinthians

Assurance –

Posted on January 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are a temple [sanctuary] of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? NASB

The word [sanctuary] was the footnote next to the word “temple” in the verse but that word is my inspiration.  I did a painting last summer for our church and titled it Sanctuary. It’s quite large – about 52” wide by maybe 36” tall. It’s a painting for both decoration and function. It protects the large TV screen in the fellowship room…more importantly it’s a message painting.
Sanctuary can be hard to find in the big picture of life.  Do you see the cross? The cross is the path. Look for sancTuary where the living water, the cross, the open door and the sun all come together and reveal the secret. Expand the image and look more closely and you’ll see the “secret” of sancTuary, ΙΧΘΥΣ, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.  See it?

Sanctuary is a beautiful promise God has provided for the big picture of your life. But wait there’s more!   1 Corinthians 3:16 goes beyond the promise of safety to an incredible blessing of assurance if you’ve found the “secret” of sancTuary.  “Do you not know that you are a temple [sanctuary] of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”   Your life IS the sanctuary [temple] God has chosen to live in!  Live big!

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Assurance –

Posted on January 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 2
• 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
• 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
• 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

If you’ve been a believer in Christ more than 5 minutes you’ve heard about sharing your faith with others. God has become part of your life. He’s no longer out there in some vague cosmos, he’s changed your mind! That’s an exciting and real process that barely has words to describe it. This is where you get to raise your hand in agreement with Paul, “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.”

It’s scary stuff to speak [or write] about our faith because our spirit knows the reality of our thoughts and our merely human judgment finds it so easy to put information ahead of transformation. Paul’s words are both challenge and assurance to us.

Our words don’t have to be “wise or persuasive” but they do have to reveal God’s power to combine human wisdom with the work of his Spirit. That’s what makes them testimony and gives us the assurance that the “mind of Christ” is being created within us.

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Temple

Posted on December 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

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“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.  From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’…

Acts 17:24-28

Don’t be fooled into believing any details of the birth of Jesus were God’s last ditch effort to provide a place for him because there was no room in the inn. That stable and food trough became the sacred space, the temple, where the needs of the people and the holiness of God finally came together.

“God did this so that they [we] would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him…” This is the reality of temple building and Advent; it’s not a blueprint of a grand structure that will save us.  It’s God’s intervention into our daily lives that fills a sacred space within us where our needs and his holiness can finally come together.

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. I Cor 6:19

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Second Chance

Posted on December 18, 2016 | Leave a comment

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44b…If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;” the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.
1 Corinthians 15

Remember this saying? You never get a second chance to make a first impression? Our first impression of life happened when God picked up a handful of dust and “The first man Adam became a living being.” It was a dramatic miracle of life that became a dramatic loss when broken and banished became “natural.” Fast forward to a much later time; a world filled with people who carried that same first impression of loss. “The spiritual did not come first, but the natural.”

God placed The Advent in that cradle long ago as a sign of faith in his creation and to reveal his plan to restore the miracle of that first creation. A baby would show the reality that new life is dependent on time, growth and nurture. This baby, “the last Adam, a life-giving spirit” would be our second chance to overcome that first impression of broken and banished…”and after that the spiritual.”

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Thanks

Posted on November 23, 2016 | Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 1:4-5. I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—

I’ve read and heard Paul’s words before. Of course they are great, and now I’m thankful I have a really good reason to pray them. I sat in church on Sunday and listened to one after another grateful volunteer share what they were thankful for. We sang a line from Build You Kingdom Here…”we are your church.” That’s not new either but this time the words of the people around me gave that phrase a fresh reality. I’m thankful for that too.

The church is not just a neat little bundle of like-minded people with well-defined walls around us. The church is the people around us who’s ordinary lives depend on more than those walls to define them. The church is people who’s minds have been changed and enriched with the extraordinary grace of Christ Jesus. That’s what makes “we are your church” worth singing about.

Build Your Kingdom Here

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Posted in 1 Corinthians, The Church, Wednesday

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Seeds of Grace

Posted on July 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

I’ve been starting each morning with a very simple short prayer. “I love you Lord, please lead me.” Then I start reading and wait for that to happen.

• Thursday: Waiting
Read Esther 1 👎 [that’s a thumb’s down sign]
Scanned Joel 1 👎
Read a new resource: Os Hillman TGIF [Today God Is First] on BibleGateway.com.  The apostle Paul said, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13)
…He [God] has foreordained that we should accomplish great things in His name – not so that we will be accepted or become more valued, but to experience the reality of a living relationship with a God who wants to demonstrate His power through each of us.”

• Friday: Still Waiting
Read Oswald Chambers
1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
“Every tiny bit of my life that has value I owe to the redemption of Jesus Christ. Am I doing anything to enable Him to bring His redemption into evident reality in the lives of others? I will only be able to do this as the Spirit of God works into me this sense of indebtedness.”

• Saturday Morning: Read Philemon👍
At last, Scripture that catches my attention! Has God been leading these last few days while I thought I was floundering? Re-reading all my notes…again. Finally I do see a thread in one single verse that ties these last few days together!

• Sunday Blessing: Seeds of Grace
Philemon 1:25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
God wants to demonstrate His power through each of us as the Spirit of God works into us this sense of indebtedness. That’s where our understanding of  “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” is revealed as more than comfortable personal assurance and becomes the Seeds of Grace to share with each other.  That’s the blessing.

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Potential

Posted on January 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

I Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres…12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known…13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Thoughts:
How in the world do you love as Jesus loved…when some people just seem to deserve our criticism or even contempt? It would be so good to have a manual for this. A book that would help us look at them with eyes that see past what they say and how they act and see them made in God’s image. Oh wait…we do.

Spoiler alert: You aren’t perfect either and one sin isn’t worse than another. We have all broken Jesus’ heart.  Jesus came to you in a relationship of Potential rather than problems.  Thank God for that kind of love.  It seems the very least Jesus might expect is that we let our hearts be broken for the potential of  others in his name.

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Thank You Notes 12/14/15

Posted on December 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 1
3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.

This is the week to focus on getting Christmas gifts sent out.  There’s a humorous ad running on TV this year about the things you can count on at Christmas, one of which is getting package delivery notifications via email and the other is Aunt Somebody going off-list and giving you something you won’t use at all.  Choosing the right gift to give is definitely an art.

Thankfully God never goes off-list and he’s an artful gift giver.  This Scripture is clear we’ve been “enriched in every way – with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge.”  Spiritual gifts are a popular topic but this gift, words and thought, doesn’t appear in any of the lists I’ve read.  I wonder why?  Think of it…a gift that makes you smart enough to never again have to wish you could eat the words you’d just spoken. The extra bonus would be Grace that would impact all your words and the dreaded “tone of voice” that sometimes belies them.  It’s a gift that keeps on giving.   You know that saying “it’s more blessed to give….?

That’s given me an idea.  I’m going to find a special digital gift box this Advent.  Then I’m going to fill that box with 26 days, or so, of personal Thank You Notes for being able to use that gift of words and thought.  It’s may not be perfect, yet, but it’s the best gift I have to offer this year: daily delivery notifications and no worries about going off-list.

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Posted in 1 Corinthians, Advent, Birth of Jesus, Christmas Bread, Colossians

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True Confessions

Posted on July 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

I Corinthians 15:10 & 11 TLB
10 But whatever I am now it is all because God poured out such kindness and grace upon me—and not without results: for I have worked harder than all the other apostles, yet actually I wasn’t doing it, but God working in me, to bless me. 11 It makes no difference who worked the hardest, I or they; the important thing is that we preached the Gospel to you and you believed it.

My Thoughts:
That phrase “God poured out such kindness and grace upon me” got me thinking about grace being an element of confession.  That led to wanting to make a list of what I should confess but that wasn’t going well.   Then I read verse 10  again and suddenly my focus changed from the first part of the phrase to the last part “—and not without results.”  It changed my whole idea about what I should be confessing and finally led to this:

• IF my confession begins to sound like the list of what God hasn’t done, isn’t that an insult to Him?
• IF my confession is a list of things I don’t like about myself, isn’t that an insult to what He has done?
• IF “the” enemy can, he’ll use those words to destroy my confidence that God is working, and steal the grace from my confession.

• THEN  I’ll give up my list!   God already knows the things that need changing in my life and He’s promised to remove them.  I’ll go for the short and sweet version, the confession of grace.
I just need more of you, Lord.

That’s a True Confession.

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Growing Season

Posted on July 13, 2015 | Leave a comment

I Corinthians 10:1-4
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

My Thoughts:
The mention of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea in I Corinthians 10:2 and baptism is interesting to me. No water involved here, the sea had parted, but something deep and vital happened that created an opportunity for them to respond so their lives could be saved and changed forever. Somehow many of them missed it’s significance and were lost anyway. It got me thinking.

Baptism is a common ritual today but what if there’s more to the story than the act itself?  What if it’s one of the “seeds” that Jesus talked about in his Parable of the Sower and it’s planted at Baptism? Any gardener knows tending to the soil, adding soil amendments if needed and keeping it watered and weeded, is not just a one time thing. During the Growing Season it has to happen over and over in order to finally enjoy the harvest of what’s been planted. This is a new slant to my thinking – Celebrate the ritual, celebrate the day, celebrate the planting but don’t forget to tend the garden. That’s how fruit happens.

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Posted in 1 Corinthians, Baptism