Browsing Tag

Confession

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Family Ties in the Social Distance #29: Proverbs 13:7–True Success

My husband, Glenn, is sharing these daily lessons  for our West Huntsville family as we are necessarily (because of the virus) spending less time physically together in worship, study and fellowship. We may be “socially distanced,” but  we’re a close-knit family and we want to keep it that way! One way to stay on track together, spiritually, is to think about a common passage and make applications for our lives together even when we are unable to assemble as frequently. I’m sharing these daily family lessons here for those in other places, whose families (or even congregations) might benefit from a common study in these uncommon days of semi-quarantine. There are Family Bible Time guides included, as well. You can adapt, shorten or lengthen them according to the ages of kids (and adults) in your family. Blessings.

From Glenn:

 

My Favorite Proverbs: Seeking True Success (Prov. 13:7).

“There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; and one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches.”

Don’t put much thought into it, but jot down your definition of “rich.”

There’s a well-known and powerful politician in the news being interviewed as she opens her refrigerator in her mansion’s kitchen to show a large supply of her favorite ice creams. Later it was noted that the two refrigerators behind her were commercial models and cost $2,400 each. Because of who she is, her refrigerators were noteworthy and made the news. Is she rich?

Most Decembers the Colleys will watch Ebenezer Scrooge complain to his nephew about requests to help the poor. In the story he had vastly more money than anyone around him. Was he rich?  To quote the poet,  he was “knee deep in a river of blessing, dying of thirst.”

In our congregation in Huntsville, Alabama we have many young families with children.  Blessed with jobs and homes and food to eat, they sit in the evenings before bed and teach their children the things of God from Scripture.  Are these people rich?

We also have widows who spend a portion of each day thinking of days long gone—days used in the living of youth with their husbands and children, making a life and loving one another and loving God.  Those children call and come see them today and often bring their own children to see their widowed grandmothers. Are they rich?

We have individual Christians who have no (or almost no) family to call their own except for their church family, the family of God.  Are these people rich?

Jesus has blessed us abundantly in many ways, and here’s a great example:  He taught us, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Lk. 12:15).  Read it over and over, ingest it and believe it.  Defining rich in terms of money is a fools game.  It isn’t a sin to have wealth but riches cannot be seen as synonymous with happiness as we make our way through life.  That philosophy will eventually crush us, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:10).  True riches are found in friends and family and especially in the security of our salvation.  Happiness is belonging and being anchored in the church for which Jesus died.  Being in that group of believers means you’re loved and have a place to extend love.

Now, are you rich?  If you’re in Christ, no matter what else is true, you truly are rich, and before you is an eternity in the greatest place you’ve never seen (2 Cor. 4:17-18ff).  Today, Christian, be happy.  Give yourself permission to acknowledge your true riches and thank God for them.  And if you’d like to learn more about becoming a Christian, I’ll be happy to show you how.

My Favorite Proverbs, Thursday: Seeking true success (Prov. 13:7).

“There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing;

And one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches.”

Don’t put much thought into it, but jot down your definition of “rich.”

There’s a well-known and powerful politician in the news being interviewed as she opens her refrigerator in her mansion’s kitchen to show a large supply of her favorite ice creams. Later it was noted that the two refrigerators behind her were commercial models and cost $2,400 each. Because of who she is, her refrigerators were noteworthy and made the news. Is she rich?

Most Decembers the Colleys will watch Ebenezer Scrooge complain to his nephew about requests to help the poor. In the story he had vastly more money than anyone around him. Was he rich?  To quote the poet,  he was “knee deep in a river of blessing, dying of thirst.”

In our congregation in Huntsville, Alabama we have many young families with children.  Blessed with jobs and homes and food to eat, they sit in the evenings before bed and teach their children the things of God from Scripture.  Are these people rich?

We also have widows who spend a portion of each day thinking of days long gone—days used in the living of youth with their husbands and children, making a life and loving one another and loving God.  Those children call and come see them today and often bring their own children to see their widowed grandmothers. Are they rich?

We have individual Christians who have no (or almost no) family to call their own except for their church family, the family of God.  Are these people rich?

Jesus has blessed us abundantly in many ways, and here’s a great example:  He taught us, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Lk. 12:15).  Read it over and over, ingest it and believe it.  Defining rich in terms of money is a fools game.  It isn’t a sin to have wealth but riches cannot be seen as synonymous with happiness as we make our way through life.  That philosophy will eventually crush us, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:10).  True riches are found in friends and family and especially in the security of our salvation.  Happiness is belonging and being anchored in the church for which Jesus died.  Being in that group of believers means you’re loved and have a place to extend love.

Now, are you rich?  If you’re in Christ, no matter what else is true, you truly are rich, and before you is an eternity in the greatest place you’ve never seen (2 Cor. 4:17-18ff).  Today, Christian, be happy.  Give yourself permission to acknowledge your true riches and thank God for them.  And if you’d like to learn more about becoming a Christian, I’ll be happy to show you how.

Family Bible Time with Glenn and Cindy

  1. Review the three characteristics of God (the super-powers that we introduced during Bible Time a couple of nights ago–omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence). Then quickly review the events of 2 Samuel 11.
  2. Then, by way of review, have two children (or one child and one parent) act out the scene when Nathan visited David. Have the very conversation that the two men had. Coach your David to become irate upon hearing about the man who took the lamb. Have Nathan say “Thou art the man,” and David respond with “I have sinned before God.”   Have Nathan  pronounce that God is going to let David live, but that the baby will die. Have your David be very sad and cry at that news as the “curtain falls”.
  3. Take a little bit of time tonight thinking about the phrase “I have sinned.” Remind your kids that it’s really hard sometimes to say those three words, even as adults. Remind them how easy it is to make excuses and pretend that we are not doing wrong, when we really are. Remind them that even Adam, in the garden of Eden ate the fruit and then made excuses when God came to Him. “The woman that you gave me…she gave it to me”(Genesis 3:12). Remind them that Aaron did not say “I have sinned.” When the golden calf was discovered by Moses, Aaron said, “I just threw the jewelry in the fire and out came this calf” (Exodus 32:24). Tell your children when people do wrong it is very important to just say “I have sinned,  and I am sorry and I am going to obey God.”
  4. Tell your children that Nathan left David’s house and David went in and found that the child was very ill. David slept on the ground all night and pleaded with God that the child would not die.  Tell your kids…”You know, that’s what I would do if you were very sick. I would pray and pray and pray that God would make you better. I would plead with God.” Ask your children “Does God hear his children when we plead?”  Then add “But does God always give us everything we want?” Do your best to make sure your children know that, while we may not get what we want, we DO, as His children, always get what is best.  Our Father knows what is best.  David’s baby is going to die, just as God has said. We’ll talk about that tomorrow night.
  5. Pray with your children.

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

The Burden on My Heart…

The following is a letter originally drafted for a woman I met rather coincidentally in a small southeastern town in which I was speaking not too long ago. She was a spirited young woman who made my day by giving me a beautiful cookbook. I had to leave quickly and was unable to study with her at the moment we met. Perhaps the letter below might help another soul somewhere who is yet in sin, or perhaps it might help you as you approach a friend who is coming near to the kingdom.Dear Valerie,

It was really a joy to get to meet you a couple of weekends ago when we spoke in ____________. I am so pleased with my cookbook. Please forward my small donation to the charity about which we spoke. Thanks so much for thinking of me. I love to cook and I love new cookbooks, especially this one with potent reminders of the spiritual bread of life.

I am always refreshed and thankful to meet people who have a zeal for spiritual things and whose lives have led them down a path to a grateful realization that God is so merciful and good. That was definitely you! I know you’re very thankful and amazed by his care and that He has allowed you to overcome so much and come to this good place in your life where you finally have a chance to glorify Him with blessings that he bountifully gives to you.

The burden on my heart now is to be sure that you are in Christ and do have that hope of heaven. I carry this burden with me to every place I speak and I see it in every new face I meet. I just had to write and be sure about this because I am going to stand before the same judgment bar one day that you will and I just want to tell as many people as I can. It’s not that I have any secrets about the will of God that you don’t have. It’s just that the devil is very busy deceiving in our world today through the hundreds of denominations out there all teaching different and opposing plans of salvation. The devil really doesn’t care how religious we are if he can just keep us outside of Christ. He doesn’t care what good hearts we have if he can just deceive those good hearts into accepting false teachings. He doesn’t care how many good things we do for our neighbors if he can just keep us out of Christ. He knows that forgiveness and redemption and all spiritual blessings are found only in Christ (Eph 1:3, 7). So he loves to make people think they are in Christ when they really have not done what the New Testament says to do to be in Christ. I don’t know about you personally, but I love your heart of submission and I want to be sure that I help you if these are things you have not thought about before. I think you are right about something you said to me. When people really want to do the will of God, He can bring people into their lives for a reason. I hope that he can use me in a small way in your life. I am praying as you study the things that are in this letter that you will want to be sure that you have followed his will and that you are in Christ where forgiveness is.

About 98% of the world of “Christendom” today teaches that all you have to do is pray the sinner’s prayer in order to be saved. Something like, “Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Thank you for loving me and saving me right here and right now…” The problem with that is it’s just not found in the Bible anywhere. It is true that he loves us and that he is willing to save every last one of us (II Peter 3:9), but as with all of his blessings, his salvation is conditional on our obedience. It really bothers me that the devil uses this “sinner’s prayer” that is nowhere in scripture to deceive so many people into believing that they are saved, when, in reality, they are still in sin.

It is true that belief in the fact that Jesus is the son of God is a prerequisite for salvation. Without that faith it is impossible to please him or be saved (Mark 16:15,16, Heb.11:6). It is true that we have to repent or put away sin from our lives. If we keep on sinning on purpose, we will perish (Luke 13:3). We have to confess that faith in Jesus as God’s Son (Romans10:10). While all of these things are essential steps toward salvation, the Bible nowhere ever says that these things put us into Christ. It’s just not there.

But the New Testament does tell us what it is that does put us into Christ: Look at these clear teachings:

Rom 6:3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
Rom 6:4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

According to this verse, it is baptism that puts us into Christ. Look at another:

Gal 3:26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
Gal 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Again, God just made it as plain as day how we put on Christ.

We can ask the same question lots of ways:

How do I wash my sins away?

Acts 22:16 And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.’

When am I forgiven?

Acts 2:38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

What do I do to be saved?

Mark 16:16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved;

Exactly what saves me?

1Pe 3:21 There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…

In fact, in every case in the book of Acts where people desired to be saved, they clearly were immediately baptized for the remission of their sins(Acts2, Acts8, Acts 9, Acts 10,11, Acts 16). In one case the man actually risked his life in the middle of the night to leave the jail and go be baptized. If he had been caught by his Roman superiors, he would have surely been executed (Acts 16). Each time I read and reread all of these passages, I get so upset at preachers who are reading the same Bible I am reading and yet are willing to ignore these plain teachings about baptism and teach that it is not essential for salvation…that it is just a symbol of your salvation. Romans 6:3,4 teaches us that baptism is the very place where we contact the death of Christ. If we don’t go down into those waters with a heart of submission, knowing that we desperately need his salvation, we do not even come in contact with the death and blood of Jesus!… and that is a scary reality to take to judgment.

The point is this. If I was baptized because I thought I was already saved, then I was not coming to God on his terms. I was not being baptized for the remission of sins like they did in Acts 2:38. I was not doing it to wash away my sins (Acts 22:16). I was not doing it to be saved (Mark16:16). It was not a step of faith if I did it as a symbol that I was already saved. I was putting my will above his. I was saying, “Lord, I was saved without ever being baptized into the death of your son, and now I will be baptized to show that I have already been saved without doing what you said I must do to be in Christ.” If I am a member of a church that teaches baptism is not essential to be in Christ, then I am a member of a church that is misleading people into a false security of salvation.I said all of those things because I could tell your heart was an open one to His will. I am praying as you read this that you will just want to be sure that you are doing and teaching what the Bible (the only word we have today from God) says about salvation. There is no more important subject. I have already been praying for you and for the good things you are doing already. I just pray that now that you have this letter in hand, you will look carefully at these passages in the context of the whole New Testament and be very careful not to be led astray by any person (including me!) I have nothing personally to gain by telling you this, except to know that I will not have to look into your face in the judgment day and know that I was silent about this very important subject. Just be sure the church with which you are working is the church of the New Testament, teaching the same thing that first opened its doors of salvation to the world in Acts 2. If we do what they did on that day, we will be what they were…Christians. But if we become involved in a religion that leads people astray we will be accountable for that, too. Remember, the devil doesn’t mind religion at all. In fact, since he is the father of lies (John 8:44), he loves false religions. Not every one that says “Lord, Lord” (i.e. not every one who is religious) will enter the kingdom (Matthew 7:21,22 ), but he that obeys the will of God. I could go on and on…

…And I will, if you have any questions at all with which I might be able to help. I’ve thought of you often and prayed for you. Again, let me thank you for my gift. I hope that this letter finds your heart open to do and teach all of his will. You can be a great minister for His cause to other ladies. So many are searching for these truths and so many are being led astray. Let me know if I can help further.

Because of Calvary!

Uncategorized

A Confession. Sort Of.

The video below contains a confession, of sorts, from the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. I found it extremely interesting. Perhaps you will, too. It comes from CNS news and is easily located in many spots on YouTube.

Even more interesting was the following press conference question submitted to Pelosi by Jane McGrath of CNS News following the surprising reference to the Word at the Catholic Conference.

McGrath: You said at a recent Catholic Community Conference that your favorite word was ‘The Word, as in the word made flesh,’ and that we need to quote, ‘give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the Word.’
So, when was the Word made flesh? Was it at the Annunciation, when Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, as the Creed says, or was it at the Nativity when he was born of the Virgin Mary? And when did the Word get the right to life?”

Pelosi: Whenever it was, we bow our heads when we talk about it in church, and that’s where I’d like to talk about that.

McGrath followed up with a written question:
… We’d like to clarify the speaker’s position on this: Did Jesus have the right to life from the moment of conception?

The Speaker’s office’s emailed response?

The speaker answered the question. Thanks.

May our confessions of our Lord, as His disciples, be very different from Pelosi’s in some very key ways:

1. May we boldly speak his name when we confess our faith in Him (Acts 8: 37).
2. May our confessions be the mouth’s response to the heart’s submissive, obedient faith (Romans 10:10; Matthew 15:8).
3. May we be willing to talk about His Will anywhere, anytime…not just when we “bow our heads in church” (Matthew 10:32).
4. May our confessions be reflected in all of our decisions, both in public policy and in every private affair (Colossians 3:17).

In short, may my talk be clear…spoken without shame, and may it accurately reflect my walk with the Lord, Jesus.

Info from www.CNSnews.com; www.jillstanek.com