Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 29, 2009
C. S. Lewis said that “the devil laughs when he sees us overcome by pride: “He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride… For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 29, 2009
Mountain Climbers Help Each Other
In May 1953, two men became the first in history to climb to the top of Mt. Everest; Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper and explorer, and his Sherpa guide from Nepal, Tenzing Norgay. They reached the summit together and attained instant international
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 15, 2009
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QUALIFICATIONS FOR MINISTRY
What qualifies someone for a task? There is a story of the testing of a candidate for missions work:
One snowy morning at 5:00 A.M., a missionary candidate rang the bell at a missionary examiner’s home. Ushered into the office, he sat three hours past his appointment
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 15, 2009
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WORKS VS. FRUIT
A machine in a factory works and turns out a product, but it could never manufacture "fruit." Fruit must grow out of life, and, in the case of the believer, it is the life of the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). When you think of "works," you think of effort, labor, strain, and toil; when you
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 15, 2009
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FRUIT DISTRIBUTION
The Spirit's provision of fruit might be compared to a man standing on a ladder in an orchard, picking the fruit and dropping it into a basket held by a helper below. No matter how much fruit is picked and dropped, the helper
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 9, 2009
In its broadest connotation “the kingdom of God” indicates God’s kingship, rule, or sovereignty recognized in the hearts and operative in the lives of His people, and effecting their complete salvation, their constitution as a church, and ultimately a redeemed universe (William
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 9, 2009
SIN WILL:
1. TAKE YOU FARTHER THAN YOU PLANNED ON GOING.
2. KEEP YOU LONGER THAN YOU PLANNED ON STAYING
3. COST YOU MORE THAN YOU PLANNED ON
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 9, 2009
Without exception, everyone of them is a perversion of something which is in itself good. Immorality, impurity, licentiousness are perversions of the sexual instinct which is in itself a lovely thing and a part of love. Idolatry is a perversion of worship, and was begun as an aid to worship.
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 2, 2009
People mark off times and celebrations in different ways. In Belgium (since 1394, in Binche), Brazil (a four-day celebration in Rio de Janeiro), Italy (in Venice, six months of celebrating in the 18th cent., now 12 days), Trinidad and Tobago (featuring a daylong competition among calypso bands),
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 2, 2009
IDOLATRY IS ABOUT "GETTING"
William Barclay makes this important observation about ancient idolatry: "The essence of idolatry is the desire to get. A man sets up an idol and worships it because he desires to get something out of god. To put it bluntly, he believes that by his sacrifices and his
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Mar 2, 2009
WHAT OTHER GODS?
What other gods could we have besides the Lord? Plenty. For Israel there were the Canaanite Baals, those jolly nature gods whose worship was a rampage of gluttony, drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods Sex, Shekels, and Stomach (an unholy
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 15, 2009
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STEP BY STEP
He does not lead me year by year
Nor even day by day,
But step by step my path unfolds;
My Lord directs my way.
Tomorrow’s plans I do not know,
I only know this minute;
But He will say, "This is the way,
By faith now walk in it."
And I am glad that it is so,
Today’s enough to
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 15, 2009
In the early church Jerome, that hardy and stern disciplinarian, removed himself far from the lurid temptations of the city only to find that he had not escaped them at all. As he confessed:
“O how often I imagined that I was in the midst of the pleasures of Rome when I was stationed in the
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 15, 2009
At the close of World War II, two pictures appeared in a magazine showing a soldier in conflict with a tank. The first showed a huge tank bearing down on a tiny soldier, about to crush him. The picture was proportioned to show the odds involved when a foot soldier with a rifle faced a tank. The
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 8, 2009
Someone has pictured legalism and libertinism as two parallel streams that run between earth and heaven. The stream of legalism is clear, sparkling, and pure; but its waters run so deep and furiously that no one can enter it without being drowned or smashed on the rocks of its harsh demands. The
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 8, 2009
Bruce Thielemann, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, told of a conversation with an active layman, who mentioned, “You preachers talk a lot about giving, but when you get right down to it, it all comes down to basin theology.”
Thielemann asked, “Basin theology? What’s that?”
The
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 8, 2009
In understanding the new reality in Christ with the law, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) explained it in this way:
“What is God’s law now? It is not above a Christian-it is under Christian. Some men hold God’s law like a rod, in terror, over Christians, and say, “If you sin you will be punished with
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Feb 1, 2009
Benjamin Franklin wrote: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost,; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Jan 26, 2009
The story is told of an aspiring artist who was commissioned to do a large sculpture for a famous museum. At last he had the opportunity to create the masterpiece he had long dreamed of. After laboring over the work for many years, he saw it grow not only in shape but in beauty. But when it was
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Contributed by Matthew Kratz on Jan 26, 2009
When the Judaizers told the Galatians that they had to get circumcised to become good Christians, they were adding the law to the gospel. They were saying that Moses had to finish what Christ could only begin.
To illustrate the problem with this kind of theology, consider the man who had an old
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