Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
2 Kings 4:42-44
42 One day a man arrived from Baal Shalishah. He brought the man of God twenty loaves of fresh baked bread from the early harvest, along with a few apples from the orchard.
Elisha said, "Pass it around to the people to eat."
43 His servant said, "For a hundred men? There's not nearly enough!"
Elisha said, "Just go ahead and do it. GOD says there's plenty."
44 And sure enough, there was
2 Kings 3:16-19
"GOD's word: Dig ditches all over this valley. 17 Here's what will happen — you won't hear the wind, you won't see the rain, but this valley is going to fill up with water and your army and your animals will drink their fill. 18 This is easy for GOD to do; he will also hand over Moab to you. 19 You will ravage the country: Knock out its fortifications, level the key villages, clear-cut the orchards, clog the springs, and litter the cultivated fields with stones.”
Friday, March 28, 2014
1 Kings 19:11-12
he was told, "Go, stand on the mountain at attention before GOD. GOD will pass by."
A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before GOD, but GOD wasn't to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but GOD wasn't in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake fire, but GOD wasn't in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper
1 Kings 11:6-9
6 Solomon openly defied GOD; he did not follow in his father David's footsteps. 7 He went on to build a sacred shrine to Chemosh, the horrible god of Moab, and to Molech, the horrible god of the Ammonites, on a hill just east of Jerusalem. 8 He built similar shrines for all his foreign wives, who then polluted the countryside with the smoke and stench of their sacrifices.
9 GOD was furious with Solomon for abandoning Him
1 Kings 11:1-3
11:1 King Solomon was obsessed with women. Pharaoh's daughter was only the first of the many foreign women he loved — Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite. 2 He took them from the surrounding pagan nations of which GOD had clearly warned Israel, "You must not marry them; they'll seduce you into infatuations with their gods." Solomon fell in love with them anyway, refusing to give them up. 3 He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines — a thousand women in all! And they did seduce him away from God
1 Kings 2:1-3
2:1 When David's time to die approached, he charged his son Solomon, saying, 2 "I'm about to go the way of all the earth, but you — be strong; show what you're made of! 3 Do what GOD tells you. Walk in the paths he shows you: Follow the life-map absolutely, keep an eye out for the signposts, his course for life set out in the revelation to Moses
This IS for us too and that’s why it’s in the Bible!
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
1 Sam 23:21-23
21 Saul said, "GOD bless you for thinking about me! 22 Now go back and check everything out. Learn his routines. Observe his movements — where he goes, who he's with. He's very shrewd, you know. 23 Scout out all his hiding places
That’s a good idea IF a human was guiding and protecting David but that wasn’t the case here! God was guiding and protecting David
1 Sam 17:55-56
55 When Saul saw David go out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, "Tell me about this young man's family."
Abner said, "For the life of me, O King, I don't know."
56 The king said, "Well, find out the lineage of this raw youth."
The king should have been interested in finding out about God and not the family that God created!
1 Sam 17:45-47
45 David answered, "You come at me with sword and spear and battle-ax. I come at you in the name of GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel's troops, whom you curse and mock. 46 This very day GOD is handing you over to me. I'm about to kill you, cut off your head, and serve up your body and the bodies of your Philistine buddies to the crows and coyotes. The whole earth will know that there's an extraordinary God in Israel. 47 And everyone gathered here will learn that GOD doesn't save by means of sword or spear. The battle belongs to GOD — he's handing you to us on a platter!"
…the battle belongs to God…
1 Sam 15:22-23
Do you think all GOD wants are sacrifices — empty rituals just for show? He wants you to listen to him! Plain listening is the thing, not staging a lavish religious production. 23 Not doing what GOD tells you is far worse than fooling around in the occult. Getting self-important around GOD is far worse than making deals with your dead ancestors.
1 Sam 15:9-11
9 Saul and the army made an exception for Agag, and for the choice sheep and cattle. They didn't include them under the terms of the holy ban. But all the rest, which nobody wanted anyway, they destroyed as decreed by the holy ban.
10 Then GOD spoke to Samuel: 11 "I'm sorry I ever made Saul king. He's turned his back on me. He refuses to do what I tell him."
Do you want for God to say this about you? Then do what He says!
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
1 Sam 8:10-18
10 So Samuel told them, delivered GOD's warning to the people who were asking him to give them a king. 11 He said, "This is the way the kind of king you're talking about operates. He'll take your sons and make soldiers of them — chariotry, cavalry, infantry, 12 regimented in battalions and squadrons. He'll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to making either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury. 13 He'll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. 14 He'll conscript your best fields, vineyards, and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. 15 He'll tax your harvests and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. 16 Your prize workers and best animals he'll take for his own use. 17 He'll lay a tax on your flocks and you'll end up no better than slaves. 18 The day will come when you will cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves. But don't expect GOD to answer
Judg 17:1-2
There was a man from the hill country of Ephraim named Micah. 2 He said to his mother, "Remember that 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you? I overheard you when you pronounced your curse. Well, I have the money; I stole it. But now I've brought it back to you."
His mother said, "GOD bless you, my son!"
YES what he did was very nice but it was not for God
Monday, March 24, 2014
Judg 13:3-5
3 The angel of God appeared to her and told her, "I know that you are barren and childless, but you're going to become pregnant and bear a son. 4 But take much care: Drink no wine or beer; eat nothing ritually unclean. 5 You are, in fact, pregnant right now, carrying a son. No razor will touch his head — the boy will be GOD's Nazirite from the moment of his birth. He will launch the deliverance from Philistine oppression."
Judg 8:27
27 Gideon made the gold that he got from others into a sacred ephod and put it on display in his hometown, Ophrah. All Israel prostituted itself there. Gideon and his family, too, were seduced by it.
Humans often think that “things” are more important in getting them to God than simply going to Him themselves
Judg 7:16-18
16 He divided the three hundred men into three companies. He gave each man a trumpet and an empty jar, with a torch in the jar. 17 He said, "Watch me and do what I do. When I get to the edge of the camp, do exactly what I do. 18 When I and those with me blow the trumpets, you also, all around the camp, blow your trumpets and shout, 'For GOD and for Gideon!'"
Faith AND works!
Judg 7:13-15
13 Gideon arrived just in time to hear a man tell his friend a dream. He said, "I had this dream: A loaf of barley bread tumbled into the Midianite camp. It came to the tent and hit it so hard it collapsed. The tent fell!"
14 His friend said, "This has to be the sword of Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite! God has turned Midian — the whole camp! — over to him."
15 When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he went to his knees before God in prayer
Judg 7:4-5
4 GOD said to Gideon: "There are still too many. Take them down to the stream and I'll make a final cut. When I say, 'This one goes with you,' he'll go. When I say, 'This one doesn't go,' he won't go." 5 So Gideon took the troops down to the stream.
See? Everything depends on what God wants!
Judg 4:6-8
6 She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, "It has become clear that GOD, the God of Israel, commands you: Go to Mount Tabor and prepare for battle. Take ten companies of soldiers from Naphtali and Zebulun. 7 I'll take care of getting Sisera, the leader of Jabin's army, to the Kishon River with all his chariots and troops. And I'll make sure you win the battle."
8 Barak said, "If you go with me, I'll go. But if you don't go with me, I won't go."
He fully depended on a human-NOT GOD!
Judg 2:1-2
2:1 GOD's angel went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, "I brought you out of Egypt; I led you to the land that I promised to your fathers; and I said, I'll never break my covenant with you — never! 2 And you're never to make a covenant with the people who live in this land. Tear down their altars! But you haven't obeyed me! What's this that you're doing?
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Josh 7:19-25
Joshua spoke to Achan, "My son, give glory to GOD, the God of Israel. Make your confession to him. Tell me what you did. Don't keep back anything from me."
20 Achan answered Joshua, "It's true. I sinned against GOD, the God of Israel. This is how I did it. 21 In the plunder I spotted a beautiful Shinar robe, two hundred shekels of silver, and a fifty-shekel bar of gold, and I coveted and took them. They are buried in my tent with the silver at the bottom."
22 Joshua sent off messengers. They ran to the tent. And there it was, buried in the tent with the silver at the bottom. 23 They took the stuff from the tent and brought it to Joshua and to all the People of Israel and spread it out before GOD.
24 Joshua took Achan son of Zerah, took the silver, the robe, the gold bar, his sons and daughters, his ox, donkey, sheep, and tent — everything connected with him. All Israel was there. They led them off to the Valley of Achor (Trouble Valley).
25 Joshua said, "Why have you troubled us? GOD will now trouble you. Today!" And all Israel stoned him — burned him with fire and stoned him with stones
In the Old Testament the punishment from God was on Earth but in the New Testament the punishment from God is not on Earth it is eternal!
Josh 7:10-12
GOD said to Joshua, "Get up. Why are you groveling? 11 Israel has sinned: They've broken the covenant I commanded them; they've taken forbidden plunder — stolen and then covered up the theft, squirreling it away with their own stuff. 12 The People of Israel can no longer look their enemies in the eye — they themselves are plunder. I can't continue with you if you don't rid yourselves of the cursed things
Funny but God says the same thing to us about getting into Heaven…
Josh 6:2-5
2 GOD spoke to Joshua, "Look sharp now. I've already given Jericho to you, along with its king and its crack troops. 3 Here's what you are to do: March around the city, all your soldiers. Circle the city once. Repeat this for six days. 4 Have seven priests carry seven ram's horn trumpets in front of the Chest. On the seventh day march around the city seven times, the priests blowing away on the trumpets. 5 And then, a long blast on the ram's horn — when you hear that, all the people are to shout at the top of their lungs. The city wall will collapse at once. All the people are to enter, every man straight on in."
Faith AND works!
Josh 4:23-24
GOD, your God, dried up the Jordan's waters for you until you had crossed, just as GOD, your God, did at the Red Sea, which had dried up before us until we had crossed. 24 This was so that everybody on earth would recognize how strong GOD's rescuing hand is and so that you would hold GOD in solemn reverence always
…always
Josh 4:1-3
GOD spoke to Joshua: 2 "Select twelve men from the people, a man from each tribe, 3 and tell them, 'From right here, the middle of the Jordan where the feet of the priests are standing firm, take twelve stones. Carry them across with you and set them down in the place where you camp tonight.'"
God made sure that they had something that they could see!
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Deut 7:9-10
9 Know this: GOD, your God, is God indeed, a God you can depend upon. He keeps his covenant of loyal love with those who love him and observe his commandments for a thousand generations. 10 But he also pays back those who hate him, pays them the wages of death; he isn't slow to pay them off — those who hate him, he pays right on time.
Deut 7:6-8
you are a people set apart as holy to GOD, your God. GOD, your God, chose you out of all the people on Earth for himself as a cherished, personal treasure.
7 GOD wasn't attracted to you and didn't choose you because you were big and important — the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. 8 He did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise he made to your ancestors. GOD stepped in and mightily bought you back out of that world of slavery
Friday, March 21, 2014
Moses said to the Israelites who had come from Egypt:
Deut 1:29-33
I tried to relieve your fears: "Don't be terrified of them. 30 GOD, your God, is leading the way; he's fighting for you. You saw with your own eyes what he did for you in Egypt; 31 you saw what he did in the wilderness, how GOD, your God, carried you as a father carries his child, carried you the whole way until you arrived here. 32 But now that you're here, you won't trust GOD, your God — 33 this same GOD who goes ahead of you in your travels to scout out a place to pitch camp, a fire by night and a cloud by day to show you the way to go."
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Num 14:6-9
6 Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, members of the scouting party, ripped their clothes 7 and addressed the assembled People of Israel: "The land we walked through and scouted out is a very good land — very good indeed. 8 If GOD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land that flows, as they say, with milk and honey. And he'll give it to us. 9 Just don't rebel against GOD! And don't be afraid of those people. Why, we'll have them for lunch! They have no protection and GOD is on our side. Don't be afraid of them!"
Num 11:1-3
The people fell to grumbling over their hard life. GOD heard. When he heard his anger flared; then fire blazed up and burned the outer boundaries of the camp. 2 The people cried out for help to Moses; Moses prayed to GOD and the fire died down. 3 They named the place Taberah (Blaze) because fire from GOD had blazed up against them
They never said a word about their grumbling ONLY that God caused a fire-how convenient!
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Ex 10:9-10
9 Moses said, "We're taking young and old, sons and daughters, flocks and herds — this is our worship-celebration of GOD."
10 He said, "I'd sooner send you off with GOD's blessings than let you go with your children. Look, you're up to no good — it's written all over your faces
What God wants and what people realize are VERY DIFFERENT things
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Ex 10:8-9
So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. He said to them, "Go ahead then. Go worship your GOD. But just who exactly is going with you?"
9 Moses said, "We're taking young and old, sons and daughters, flocks and herds — this is our worship-celebration of GOD."
Anything on Earth that God has brought to life…
Ex 10:1-2
GOD said to Moses: "Go to Pharaoh. I've made him stubborn, him and his servants, so that I can force him to look at these signs 2 and so you'll be able to tell your children and grandchildren how I toyed with the Egyptians, like a cat with a mouse
And you’ll be able to read in the Bible what I did to Egypt!
God said:
Ex 9:15-17
You know that by now I could have struck you and your people with deadly disease and there would be nothing left of you, not a trace. 16 But for one reason only I've kept you on your feet: To make you recognize my power so that my reputation spreads in all the Earth. 17 You are still building yourself up at my people's expense
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Gen 22:1-2
22:1 After all this, God tested Abraham. God said, "Abraham!"
"Yes?" answered Abraham. "I'm listening."
2 He said, "Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I'll point out to you."
This is in the Bible because God was going to sacrifice His son
Gen 19:31-32
the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is getting old and there's not a man left in the country by whom we can get pregnant. 32 Let's get our father drunk with wine and lie with him. We'll get children through our father — it's our only chance to keep our family alive."
Was keeping their family alive an eternal solution?
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Gen 7:19-23
19 The flood got worse until all the highest mountains were covered 20 — the high water mark reached twenty feet above the crest of the mountains. 21 Everything died. Anything that moved — dead. Birds, farm animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life — dead. And all people — dead. 22 Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; 23 he wiped out the whole works — people and animals, crawling creatures and flying birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship lived.
When you read this YOU KNOW that what’s coming next is worse!
Gen 6:5-8
GOD saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil — evil, evil, evil from morning to night. 6 GOD was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. 7 GOD said, "I'll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds — the works. I'm sorry I made them."
8 But Noah was different. GOD liked what he saw in Noah.
Out of the WHOLE world God liked what He saw in Noah
Gen 6:5-8
GOD saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil — evil, evil, evil from morning to night. 6 GOD was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. 7 GOD said, "I'll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds — the works. I'm sorry I made them."
8 But Noah was different. GOD liked what he saw in Noah.
Gen 2:16-17
16 GOD commanded the Man, "You can eat from any tree in the garden, 17 except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don't eat from it. The moment you eat from that tree, you're dead."
God took the time AND effort to tell the man what would happen if he ate from it so there would be no surprise!
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Heb 12:5-9
My dear child, don't shrug off God's discipline,
but don't be crushed by it either.
6 It's the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
7 God is educating you; that's why you must never drop out. He's treating you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training, 8 the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? 9 We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God's training so we can truly live?
Heb 11
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. 2 The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
3 By faith, we see the world called into existence by God's word, what we see created by what we don't see.
4 By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That's what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.
5 By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. "They looked all over and couldn't find him because God had taken him." We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken "he pleased God." 6 It's impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.
7 By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn't see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
8 By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. 9 By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. 10 Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations — the City designed and built by God.
11 By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said. 12 That's how it happened that from one man's dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions.
13 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. 14 People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. 15 If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. 16 But they were after a far better country than that — heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.
17 By faith, Abraham, at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God. Acting in faith, he was as ready to return the promised son, his only son, as he had been to receive him — 18 and this after he had already been told, "Your descendants shall come from Isaac." 19 Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead. In a sense, that's what happened when he received Isaac back, alive from off the altar.
20 By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.
21 By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph's sons in turn, blessing them with God's blessing, not his own — as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
22 By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.
23 By an act of faith, Moses' parents hid him away for three months after his birth. They saw the child's beauty, and they braved the king's decree.
24 By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. 25 He chose a hard life with God's people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. 26 He valued suffering in the Messiah's camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. 27 By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king's blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going. 28 By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn't touch them.
29 By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.
30 By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls fell flat.
31 By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.
32 I could go on and on, but I've run out of time. There are so many more — Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . . 33 Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, 34 fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. 35 Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. 36 Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. 37 We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless — 38 the world didn't deserve them! — making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39 Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. 40 God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
Heb 4:1-3
For as long, then, as that promise of resting in him pulls us on to God's goal for us, we need to be careful that we're not disqualified. 2 We received the same promises as those people in the wilderness, but the promises didn't do them a bit of good because they didn't receive the promises with faith. 3 If we believe, though, we'll experience that state of resting. But not if we don't have faith. Remember that God said, Exasperated, I vowed, "They'll never get where they're going, never be able to sit down and rest." God made that vow, even though he'd finished his part before the foundation of the world.
Heb 3:15-19
Today, please listen; don't turn a deaf ear as in the bitter uprising. 16 For who were the people who turned a deaf ear? Weren't they the very ones Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And who was God provoked with for forty years? Wasn't it those who turned a deaf ear and ended up corpses in the wilderness? 18 And when he swore that they'd never get where they were going, wasn't he talking to the ones who turned a deaf ear? 19 They never got there because they never listened, never believed.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
2 Tim 3:15-17
There's nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another — showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. 17 Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.
What did the Son of God use to defend Himself against Satan? The word of God! He was a servant carrying out orders from God and we are His body!
2 Tim 2:20-21
20 In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets — some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. 21 Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Col 2:11
11 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It's not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you're already in — insiders — not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin
Col
Col 1:22-23
by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. 23 You don't walk away from a gift like that!
Phi
Phil 4:11-13
I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. 12 I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. 13 Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.
Phi
Phil 3:12-14
I'm not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. 13 Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward — to Jesus. 14 I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back.
Phi
Phil 2:5-11
5 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. 6 He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. 7 Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! 8 Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death — and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
9 Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, 10 so that all created beings in heaven and on earth — even those long ago dead and buried — will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, 11 and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father
Phi
Phil 1:18
I've decided that I really don't care about their motives, whether mixed, bad, or indifferent. Every time one of them opens his mouth, Christ is proclaimed, so I just cheer them on!
Eph
Eph 5:5
You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them — the usual variations on idolatry — will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.
Eph
Eph 5:2
Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Eph
Eph 5:1
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents
Because God IS your parent!
Eph
Eph 4:32
Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you
Did you realize that God in Christ Jesus forgave you? Forgiveness has a new definition!
Eph
Eph 2:7-10
7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! 9 We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! 10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing
Eph
Eph 1:11-14
11 It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, 12 part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13 It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free — signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. 14 This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
Eph
Eph 1:4-12
4 Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. 5 Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) 6 He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people — free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! 8 He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, 9 letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, 10 a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11 It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, 12 part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
Most people don’t realize that He did this…
Friday, March 7, 2014
Gal
Gal 5:26
we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse
Gal
Gal 5:24
24 Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good — crucified.
As Christians we are Christ’s body so yes we will be crucified BUT it is a different kind of crucifixion
Gal
Gal 5:24
24 Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good — crucified.
Gal
Gal 5:6
in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
Gal
Gal 5:3-4
The person who accepts the ways of rule keeping trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
4 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace
Read that again!
Gal
Gal 5:2
The moment any one of you submits to any rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered
Read that again!
Gal
Gal 5:2
The moment any one of you submits to any rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered
Gal
Gal 5:1
Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
If you HAVE to make money to live at all isn’t that a form of slavery?
Gal
Gal 4:17
teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God's grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important.
Gal
Gal 4:17
teachers go to great lengths to flatter you, but their motives are rotten. They want to shut you out of the free world of God's grace so that you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them feel important.
Gal
Gal 3:11
The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you
Gal
Gal 2:16
we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ.
2 Cor
2 Cor 12:8-9
At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, 9 and then he told me, My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
2 Cor
2 Cor 12:7
I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations
2 Cor
2 Cor 10:17-18
If you want to claim credit, claim it for God." 18 What you say about yourself means nothing in God's work. It's what God says about you that makes the difference.
2 Cor
2 Cor 8:15
Nothing left over to the one with the most, Nothing lacking to the one with the least.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
2 Cor
2 Cor 4:18
The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can't see now will last forever
2 Cor
2 Cor 4:4
They want only the fashionable god of darkness. They think he can give them what they want, and that they won't have to bother believing a Truth they can't see. They're stone-blind to the dayspring brightness that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we'll ever get.
2 Cor
2 Cor 3:18
our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him
2 Cor
2 Cor 1:9-10
Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally — not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! 10 And he did it!
2 Cor
2 Cor 1:5
plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort — we get a full measure of that
1 Cor
1 Cor 15:35-38
35 Some skeptic is sure to ask, "Show me how resurrection works. Give me a diagram; draw me a picture. What does this 'resurrection body' look like?" 36 If you look at this question closely, you realize how absurd it is. There are no diagrams for this kind of thing. 37 We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a "dead" seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. 38 You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don't look anything alike
1 Cor
1 Cor 13
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
2 If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
3 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
4 Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, 5 Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first, "Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, 6 Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, 7 Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
8 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. 9 We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. 10 But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 Cor
1 Cor 12:2
doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can
and God gave us our intelligence!
1 Cor
1 Cor 12:2
doing it because everybody else did it? It's different in this life. God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can
1 Cor
1 Cor 10:11-14
11 These are all warning markers — DANGER! — in our history books, written down so that we don't repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel — they at the beginning, we at the end — and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. 12 Don't be so naive and self-confident. You're not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it's useless. Cultivate God-confidence.
13 No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.
14 So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.
1 Cor
1 Cor 10:1-6
10:1 Remember our history, friends, and be warned. All our ancestors were led by the providential Cloud and taken miraculously through the Sea. 2 They went through the waters, in a baptism like ours, as Moses led them from enslaving death to salvation life. 3 They all ate 4 and drank identical food and drink, meals provided daily by God. They drank from the Rock, God's fountain for them that stayed with them wherever they were. And the Rock was Christ. 5 But just experiencing God's wonder and grace didn't seem to mean much — most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.
6 The same thing could happen to us
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
1 Cor
1 Cor 8:7
knowing isn't everything. If it becomes everything, some people end up as know-it-alls who treat others as know-nothings
1 Cor
1 Cor 7:19
19 Being Jewish isn't the point. The really important thing is obeying God's call, following his commands
1 Cor
1 Cor 6:12
12 Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate
1 Cor
1 Cor 3:3
As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything's going your way?
1 Cor
1 Cor 2:13
13 I don't have to rely on the world's guesses and opinions. I didn't learn this by reading books or going to school; I learned it from God
1 Cor
1 Cor 1:17
17 God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach what he has done, collecting a following for him
1 Cor
1 Cor 1:9
9 God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
Christianity is a spiritual adventure NOT A CAREER! And God starts you-NOT YOU. And it’s for life whereas a career is only until retirement!
1 Cor
1 Cor 1:9
9 God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.
Christianity is a spiritual adventure NOT A CAREER! And it’s for life whereas a career is only until retirement!
Rom
Rom 15:1-3
15:1 Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. 2 Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, "How can I help?"
3 That's exactly what Jesus did. He didn't make it easy for himself by avoiding people's troubles, but waded right in and helped out
Rom
Rom 14:23
some days trying to impose your opinions on others, other days just trying to please them — then you know that you're out of line
Rom
Rom 14:17-18
17 God's kingdom isn't a matter of what you put in your stomach, for goodness' sake. It's what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy. 18 Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ
Rom
Rom 14:10
Eventually, we're all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God
Rom
Rom 14:9
That's why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other
Rom
Rom 14:4
Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God's welcome?
Rom
Rom 13:11
11 But make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God
dedication
Humans are MORE than willing to dedicate EVERYTHING they can possibly have to education and a job but they dedicate NOTHING to God
Rom
Rom 13:9
9 The law code adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. 10 You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
Rom
Rom 13:4
The police aren't there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Rom
Rom 12:3
The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
Rom
Rom 12:1-2
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Rom
Rom 11:7
The chosen ones of God were those who let God pursue his interest in them, and as a result received his stamp of legitimacy
Rom
Rom 11:5-6
There's a fiercely loyal minority still — not many, perhaps, but probably more than you think. 6 They're holding on, not because of what they think they're going to get out of it, but because they're convinced of God's grace and purpose in choosing them
Rom
Rom 10:9
You're not "doing" anything; you're simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That's salvation.
Rom
Rom 9:22-23
22 If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure 23 and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn't that all right?
Rom
Rom 9:15-16
God told Moses, "I'm in charge of mercy. I'm in charge of compassion." 16 Compassion doesn't originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God's mercy
Rom
Rom 9:8
Israelite identity was never racially determined by sexual transmission, but it was God-determined by promise
Rom
Rom 7:24-25
Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25 The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
Rom
Rom 5:8
God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him
Rom
Rom 4:13
13 That famous promise God gave Abraham — that he and his children would possess the earth — was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed
Rom
Rom 4:12
Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God's action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.
Circumcision redefined!
Rom
Rom 4:1-3
So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? 2 If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. 3 What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."
Rom
Rom 3:26
God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.
And a the Bible says: we live by faith
Rom
Rom 2:28-29
29 You become a Jew by who you are. It's the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew
Rom
Rom 2:28-29
It's not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. 29 You become a Jew by who you are. It's the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew. And recognition comes from God, not critics.
Rom
Rom 2:28-29
It's not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. 29 You become a Jew by who you are. It's the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew. And recognition comes from God, not legalistic critics.
Rom
Rom 2:17-21
don't assume that you can lean back in the arms of your religion and take it easy, feeling smug because you're an insider to God's revelation, 18 a connoisseur of the best things of God, informed on the latest doctrines! 19 I have a special word of caution for you who are sure that you have it all together yourselves and, because you know God's revealed Word inside and out, 20 feel qualified to guide others through their blind alleys and dark nights and confused emotions to God. 21 While you are guiding others, who is going to guide you?
Rom
Rom 2:13
Merely hearing God's law is a waste of your time if you don't do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.
Rom
Rom 2:11
God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.
Rom
Rom 1:5
Through Jesus we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others
Monday, March 3, 2014
Acts
Acts 20:24
What matters most to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God.
Acts
Acts 19:35
her sacred stone image that fell straight out of heaven?
What humans THINK that they know happened and what God actually did are two very different things!
Acts
Acts 19:2
Did you take God into your mind only, or did you also embrace him with your heart?
There IS difference!
Acts
Acts 15:11
we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us
Acts
Acts 15:8
God, who can't be fooled by any pretense on our part but always knows a person's thoughts
Acts
God said this about David and He can say it about you too:
Acts 13:22
'I've searched the land and found this David, son of Jesse. He's a man whose heart beats to my heart, a man who will do what I tell him.'
Acts
Acts 13:16-19
16 Paul stood up, paused and took a deep breath, then said, "Fellow Israelites and friends of God, listen. 17 God took a special interest in our ancestors, pulled our people who were beaten down in Egyptian exile to their feet, and led them out of there in grand style. 18 He took good care of them for nearly forty years in that godforsaken wilderness 19 and then, having wiped out seven enemies who stood in the way, gave them the land of Canaan for their very own
The original Israelites from Egypt!
Acts
Acts 12:11
The Master sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's vicious little production and the spectacle the Jewish mob was looking forward to
This is there to teach us that no matter what the problem is the Master will help us!
Acts
Acts 11:23
urging them to stay with it the rest of their lives
That is WAY past the age of retirement!
Acts
Acts 11:16
16 I remembered Jesus' words: 'John baptized with water; you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'
Man made Churches teach only baptism with water…
Acts
Acts 11:16
16 I remembered Jesus' words: 'John baptized with water; you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'
Acts
Acts 11:7-9
7 "Then I heard a voice: 'Go to it, Peter — kill and eat.' 8 I said, 'Oh, no, Master. I've never so much as tasted food that wasn't kosher.' 9 The voice spoke again: 'If God says it's okay, it's okay.'
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Acts
Acts 10:34-35
God plays no favorites! 35 It makes no difference who you are or where you're from — if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open
Acts
Acts 9:3-9
3 He set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. 4 As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: "Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?"
5 He said, "Who are you, Master?"
"I am Jesus, the One you're hunting down. 6 I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you'll be told what to do next."
7 His companions stood there dumbstruck — they could hear the sound, but couldn't see anyone — 8 while Saul, picking himself up off the ground, found himself stone blind. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. 9 He continued blind for three days. He ate nothing, drank nothing.
Acts
Acts 5:24
24 The chief of the Temple police and the high priests were puzzled. "What's going on here anyway?"
What God does among human can’t be explained!
Acts
Acts 5:11
11 By this time the whole church and, in fact, everyone who heard of these things had a healthy respect for God. They knew God was not to be trifled with.
Acts
Acts 5:1-2
a man named Ananias — his wife, Sapphira, conniving in this with him — sold a piece of land, 2 secretly kept part of the price for himself, and then brought the rest to the apostles and made an offering of it.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Acts
Acts 3:26
God, having raised up his Son, sent him to bless you as you turn, one by one, from your evil ways
Acts
Acts 3:22-23
22 Moses, for instance, said, 'Your God will raise up for you a prophet just like me from your family. Listen to every word he speaks to you. 23 Every last living soul who refuses to listen to that prophet will be wiped out
Acts
Acts 3:6-8
6 Peter said, "I don't have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!" 7 He grabbed him by the right hand and pulled him up. In an instant his feet and ankles became firm. 8 He jumped to his feet and walked.
Acts
Acts 2:40
He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, "Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture!"
Acts
Acts 2:38-39
your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away — whomever, in fact, our Master God invites."
It doesn’t say: whoever does the right things NO it says: whomever, in fact, our Master God invites
John
John 21:15-17
After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
16 He then asked a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Master, you know I love you."
Jesus said, "Shepherd my sheep."
17 Then he said it a third time: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, "Do you love me?" so he answered, "Master, you know everything there is to know. You've got to know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep
John
John 15:1-2
"I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. 2 He cuts off every branch of me that doesn't bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more
John
John 14:22-25
22 Judas (not Iscariot) said, "Master, why is it that you are about to make yourself plain to us but not to the world?"
23 "Because a loveless world," said Jesus, "is a sightless world. If anyone loves me, he will carefully keep my word and my Father will love him — we'll move right into the neighborhood! 24 Not loving me means not keeping my words. The message you are hearing isn't mine. It's the message of the Father who sent me.
25 "I'm telling you these things while I'm still living with you
John
Jesus said:
John 14:21
21 "The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that's who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him."
John
John 13:3-15
3 Jesus knew that the Father had put him in complete charge of everything, that he came from God and was on his way back to God. 4 So he got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron. 6 When he got to Simon Peter, Peter said, "Master, you wash my feet?"
7 Jesus answered, "You don't understand now what I'm doing, but it will be clear enough to you later."
8 Peter persisted, "You're not going to wash my feet — ever!"
Jesus said, "If I don't wash you, you can't be part of what I'm doing."
9 "Master!" said Peter. "Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!"
10 Jesus said, "If you've had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you're clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene. So now you're clean. But not every one of you." 11(He knew who was betraying him. That's why he said, "Not every one of you.") 12 After he had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table.
Then he said, "Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You address me as 'Teacher' and 'Master,' and rightly so. That is what I am. 14 So if I, the Master and Teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other's feet. 15 I've laid down a pattern for you. What I've done, you do.
John
John 12:47-50
47 "If anyone hears what I am saying and doesn't take it seriously, I don't reject him. I didn't come to reject the world; 48 I came to save the world. But you need to know that whoever puts me off, refusing to take in what I'm saying, is willfully choosing rejection. The Word, the Word-made-flesh that I have spoken and that I am, that Word and no other is the last word. 49 I'm not making any of this up on my own. The Father who sent me gave me orders, told me what to say and how to say it. 50 And I know exactly what his command produces: real and eternal life. That's all I have to say. What the Father told me, I tell you."
John
John 12:9-11
The people came to take a look, not only at Jesus but also at Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. 10 So the high priests plotted to kill Lazarus 11 because so many of the Jews were going over and believing in Jesus on account of him.
Lazarus had already been raised from the dead and they wanted him dead again?
John
John 11:45-48
That was a turnaround for many of the Jews who were with Mary. They saw what Jesus did, and believed in him. 46 But some went back to the Pharisees and told on Jesus. 47 The high priests and Pharisees called a meeting of the Jewish ruling body. "What do we do now?" they asked. "This man keeps on doing things, creating God-signs. 48 If we let him go on, pretty soon everyone will be believing in him and the Romans will come and remove what little power and privilege we still have."
They were only worried about what THEY could or couldn’t do!
John
John 11:41-42
They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "Father, I'm grateful that you have listened to me. 42 I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I've spoken so that they might believe that you sent me."
It was for God’s glory not His!
John
John 11:41-42
They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "Father, I'm grateful that you have listened to me. 42 I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I've spoken so that they might believe that you sent me."
John
John 11:40
Jesus looked her in the eye. "Didn't I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
He didn’t say that she would see what He could do!
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