Tag Archives: World

Dictionary Day

Posted on January 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

In: enclosed or surrounded by
Love: strong affection arising out of kinship or personal ties
Manifest: clear or obvious to the eye or mind.
World: the earth with its inhabitants and all things upon it.
Live: to exist
Through: able to move from one side to the other
Him: I=Jesus, Ch=Christ, Th=Theou (God’s), U=Uios (Son), S=Souter (Savior) ICHTHUS

Enclosed or surrounded by the strong affection of God, arising out of kinship or personal ties with Him, it becomes clear or obvious to the eye or mind that God sent Jesus to the earth with its inhabitants and all things upon it so we might exist knowing we are able to move from one side to the other of eternity because of Him.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in 1 John, Light, New Testament, Sunday

Tagged , , , ,

Sunday with John — Separated

Posted on October 16, 2022 | Leave a comment

John 17:11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified[set apart] in truth.”  ESV

What is the general theme of the passage?
Jesus is guarding all those He keeps in the Father’s name so that while they are in the world His joy might be fulfilled in them.  For our sake He has dedicated Himself to giving us the truth that sanctifies and separates us from influence of the evil one.  

What does it say about God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit?)
Jesus is going to His Father.  He has faithfully spoken the Word of truth to those the Father has declared His.

What does it say about people?
This world is a proving ground for the people of Jesus to define their identify in Him as separate from the lie of the evil one who says the world is his.

Is there truth here for me?
The world is not the left-behind place the devil would like us to believe it is.  The Father has never given up control over His creation and His world.  From Day One of Creation, the world was been a place of separation: the light from the darkness, Heaven from earth, land from seas, day from night and man from beasts, “and God saw everything he had made and behold, it was very good.”   But it wasn’t nirvana.  God wasn’t creating a puppet world.  It’s the devil’s lie that in this world we are under his control.  God’s choice for the free “will” of man was to show them the clear separation between the devil’s lie and the truth that Jesus is the way we “also may be sanctified in [His]. truth” because we are “not of the world.”   

Leave a comment

Posted in John, Matthew, New Testament, Sunday

Tagged , , , ,

Assurance –

Posted on January 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

John 15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”

It’s a desirable thing to be a servant to Jesus but it’s even better to be a friend. A servant operates on a need-to-know basis to accomplish an assigned task. A friend shares the privilege of knowing the master plan. The great heroes of the Old Testament, Moses, Abraham and David, were honored to be identified as servants of God. They were faithful but their access to God was limited. For the most part they saw God as a chief-of-state they could only catch glimpses of through the eyes of the chief priest and obeying the law.

Now Christ has bridged that gap between servant and friend. This is your assurance: that friendship is yours at the most personal level; the Spirit of Christ living inside you. He did not choose you to live a life based on what someone else may or may not know but has provided all YOU need to know to be his friend. He’s chosen you as his representative so you “might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last” in the world we live in – our Father’s world. The ability to know God is only limited by our desire to know Jesus Christ on the same intimate level that he knows his Father.

Leave a comment

Posted in Assurance, John, Sunday

Tagged , , , , , ,

Jesus Wins!

Posted on June 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

2 Thessalonians Living Bible
1-3 & 7-8 And now, what about the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to meet him? Please don’t be upset and excited, dear brothers, by the rumor that this day of the Lord has already begun. If you hear of people having visions and special messages from God about this, or letters that are supposed to have come from me, don’t believe them. 3 Don’t be carried away and deceived regardless of what they say…7 As for the work this man of rebellion and hell will do when he comes, it is already going on, but he himself will not come until the one who is holding him back steps out of the way. 8 Then this wicked one will appear, whom the Lord Jesus will burn up with the breath of his mouth and destroy by his presence when he returns

Thoughts:
Two topics seem to be a big part of the community of faith today; Jesus’ return and the miserable state of the world.  Both are very real.  The fact is, even in our community of faith, we are caught in between the hope of Jesus’ return, that we don’t know much about, and  all the well-documented evil in our world we hear so much about.  It’s hard to know how to reconcile all that.  The “man of rebellion and hell” speaks loudly with many borrowed voices that come at us daily.   They question the truth we know about the Lord, but can’t yet see.  Those voices hope to leave us with impotent despair and to make what is unseen seem impossible to the world…and even to us. Those voices swear that our only hope is to be prepared for the worst with worry, despair and even guns and violence if need be.  Don’t listen!

Jesus is the reconciler of life with a different voice and a true hope for living our life of faith right in the midst of a world that needs a makeover.   You win and Jesus wins!   John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By
“this-worldliness” I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”

Leave a comment

Posted in Sunday, Thessalonians

Tagged , ,