Category: Belief

11/20/2023 1 Comment

Karma

Brita angrily kicked the wandering Cocker Spaniel, who dared to enter her front yard. Her neighbor, Betty, viewed the mean action with disgust. Two weeks later, when Brita broke her leg after slipping off her front porch, Betty noted to her husband with some satisfaction, “That’s karma. She’s getting what she deserved.”

Karma is a Hindu concept that views one’s actions as bringing upon themselves good or bad results either in their present life or in a reincarnation. It is a cosmic reward or punishment principle based on a person’s deeds. In The Logic of God, Ravi Zacharias explained, “Hinduism has two nonnegotiable beliefs: karma and reincarnation. No Hindu will trade these away.”

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9/25/2023 0 Comments

Every Generation

God has left the planet. The world is a mess. He does not care about His people or humanity any longer. Have you ever had those thoughts? That is why it is so important to study Scripture.

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8/13/2023 0 Comments

The Warrior is a Child

Dad sits at the small kitchen table with his Marine ball cap covering his scattered gray hair. His brow is furrowed, and his piercing blue eyes appear deep in thought. Slowly he adds words to a journal that increasingly makes little sense. I asked what he was writing, and he shared that he was composing thoughts on how God likes eggs cooked. I had just asked him how he wanted his eggs that morning; that thought was fixed in his mind.

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7/3/2023 1 Comment

"The Sparkle Creed"

Edina Community Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Edina, Minnesota, celebrated Pride Sunday led by their female pastor in reciting the sparkle creed whose words state:
I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads, and who saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.[1]
This creed is a gross perversion of theology. It represents the misguided attempts of a congregation to fit God into their inclusive agenda that will spare no expense to accommodate a world fully intent on making sexual sin something to celebrate and force upon all those who take God’s warnings seriously and strive to obey Him.

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3/31/2023 1 Comment

The Power of Care

Do you feel like a caring Creator guards your life, or are you feeling incredibly vulnerable and unsafe? When we know Jesus, at least three important facts should kick into gear. First, we understand from Psalm 139:16 that “Your [God’s] eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.” There is nothing accidental about our lives—we were purposefully designed. Second, we know from John 3:16, “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Faith in Jesus brings us a redeemed life with God that will forever unfold. But we must understand a third critical fact to negotiate life joyfully.

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2/6/2023 0 Comments

Who has Real Faith?

Geoff Davis

The walk of faith is constantly filled with paradoxes. Think about it! We must surrender to win. We must fall to rise. We must bow to be blessed. We must die to live. And if you are a Paratrooper, you must jump from the aircraft for the parachute to open. We are constantly bombarded with this or that view of faith.

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9/26/2022 0 Comments

Why We Exist

Gerry got back from Afghanistan, and he is not in good shape. Half his squad was on a mounted patrol when their vehicles were hit by an improvised explosive device (IED), killing four and badly wounding two. Unfortunately, he had to identify the bodies and could not get the images out of his head. Now between alcohol and too many medications, his life has lost meaning, and he has frequent thoughts of ending it.

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9/12/2022 0 Comments

What's Your View?

Pastor Brad at Impact Church asks, “Does your view of God determine your view of life, or does your view of life determine your view of God?” How one answers that question is profoundly revealing.

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7/16/2022 0 Comments

The Missing Spatula Handle

Ron and Joyce, shortly after getting married, hosted a prayer breakfast at their home. A British Major General visiting Fort Benning was to be the speaker at the prayer breakfast. Joyce baked a coffee cake for breakfast that morning. While cleaning up the kitchen, she realized the spatula handle was missing. After looking everywhere, she concluded it must have fallen into the coffee cake.

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7/1/2022 0 Comments

Inability to See

Meditation
John 8:25-27—“Who are You?” they questioned. “Precisely what I’ve been telling you from the very beginning,” Jesus told them. I have many things to say and to judge about you, but the One who sent Me is true, and what I have heard from Him—these things I tell the world.” They did not know He was speaking to them about the Father.

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5/14/2022 0 Comments

Your Faith has Healed You!

Life is full of challenges. As you read that what challenge comes to mind that you are facing? For some of us, it is financial, for others relationships, and still others health, the need for work, etc. What is unhealthy is when we let the problem(s) we face dominate our thinking because we flounder in fear and uncertainty. In his book Brave, Strong & Tender, Phil Downer asked, “Do you ever find yourself spending more time thinking about the size of your problems than thinking about the size of your God? Do you feel locked up because of fear?”

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4/25/2022 1 Comment

The Problem with Religion

Did you know that God is offended by meaningless, false-hearted chanting?

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3/24/2022 0 Comments

Believing Gained by Reading

Erwin introduced me to Rojan* an 80-year-old doctor born in Peru. We listened to him as he explained that there is no such thing as hell and that when he dies, he will simply decompose and return to the earth—body, spirit, and soul. There is no afterlife he said. Implied in his words were his belief that there is no God and no accountability for us in how we live. He was firm in his convictions and seemingly unconcerned of a finite life.

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12/7/2021 1 Comment

A Faith of Equal Privilege

The antidote to discrimination and racism is Jesus Christ. Pastor E.V. Hill once shared his response to Black Panthers threatening his life for preaching about “that white Jesus.”
I don’t know anything about a white Christ—I know about Christ, a Savior named Jesus. I don’t know what color He is. He was born in brown Asia, He fled to black Africa, and He was in heaven before the gospel got to white Europe . . . I do know one thing: if you bow at the altar with color on your mind, and get up with color on your mind, go back again and keep going back until you no longer look at His color, but at his greatness and His power—His power to save![1]

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8/21/2021 0 Comments

Necessitarianism

Necessitarianism is “the doctrine that all events, including acts of the will, are determined by antecedent causes; determinism.”[1] The word first came into usage in 1825.[2] The philosopher Spinoza was the most famous defender of this metaphysical principle (the key groundwork of his Ethics[3]), considered as the strongest form of hard determinism which disputes the libertarian’s concept of free will.[4]

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7/29/2021 1 Comment

Nebulous

I have a theory for which I would love to get your feedback. Earth’s inhabitants all spoke the same language when they were created. That ability to easily communicate fed their pride and they decided not to spread over the earth in obedience to God’s command (Genesis 1:28). They preferred to build a prodigious city with a colossal tower where they could make a name for themselves or, in essence, do whatever they felt like doing (Gen. 11:1-4). Because of their pride and idolatrous hearts God came down to their city, called Babylon, and decisively acted.

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7/7/2021 0 Comments

God's Gracious Hand

Meditation
Ezra 8:21-23--I proclaimed a fast by the Ahava River, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask Him for a safe journey for us, our children, and all our possessions. I did this because I was ashamed to ask the king for infantry and cavalry to protect us from enemies during the journey, since we had told him, “The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek Him, but His great anger is against all who abandon Him.” So we fasted and pleaded with our God about this, and He granted our request.

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6/25/2021 0 Comments

I Identify As . . .

While at a golf fundraising event I saw a marine veteran wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed, “I Identify As Vaccinated.” It radiated humor but was actually rather brilliant. It subtly broadcast with absurdity the politically-correct notion that someone can identify as whatever gender they desire. As the federal government moves to require schools to accommodate transgender students not surprisingly there is an immediate push back. College of the Ozarks is suing President Joe Biden because his executive order on “gender identity” violates the school’s religious freedom by compelling it to force their students to share dorms and shower facilities with members of the opposite sex.[1] So let’s take a closer, deeper look at the whole issue of identity.

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5/21/2021 0 Comments

Cord Changes

Jonathan Cahn shared a historical piece of information that is quite fascinating.[1] In the time of the Jewish second temple, each Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), a scarlet cord was attached to the Temple doors. It represented the people’s sins in line with Isaiah 1:18, “‘Come, let us discuss this,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will be like wool.’” At the end of the day after the completion of the ordinances the scarlet cord turned white. This supernatural phenomenon occurred annually until the year Jesus Christ was crucified—then the cord remained scarlet. Why did this happen? Because Jesus was the final atonement offered for our sins. Had the rabbis in Jesus’ time truly been looking for the Messiah, that sign alone should have given them pause to consider that He was God’s Son sent for them.

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3/22/2021 0 Comments

Baal

The Israelites were living in mountain hideouts, caves and strongholds to escape the Midianites, Amalekites and Qedemites who frequently attacked them (Judges 6:2,3). Before God would use a young man named Gideon to deliver Israel from these aggressive raiders, He needed to wrest the weakest house in the tribe of Manasseh from their allegiance to Baal. Gideon’s own father and family members were engaged in idol worship. So an angel of the LORD appeared to him and gave him a mission.

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