The Spiritual Deception of Christmas

It is with great joy that we observe the traditions of Christmas each year. We love the carols of Christmas, and the Crèche / manger scene, and the tree and the decorations, and the family visits and the sharing of presents. We are blessed by the charitable outreach in which some engage each year. We […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Thinking You Can’t Live Forever

Oh, what a mess things are in the world. Things are such a mess in this world that many of us don’t think that we and our children and our grand-children long yet to come, have any chance of getting out of this earthly mess alive. That is a spiritual deception: none of us get […]

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The Spiritual Deceptions of Secular Wealth and Education

What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Much of what is wrong with America can be understood if you choose to grasp, to know and understand and believe, our distraction from God by the spiritual deceptions of secular wealth and education. These two things, secular education and secular wealth, have […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Non-Renewal of Spirit and Mind

There is another spiritual deception, the spiritual deception of not renewing your spirit and mind and thinking and believing that you don’t need to do the things involved in that renewal, day by day, process. Scripture (Ephesians 4:15) admonishes and encourages us to speak the truth, and to do so in love. Scripture (II Corinthians […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Misapprehension of God’s Blessings

The first chapter of Romans is one we often gloss over, except maybe for the first two verses, as we eagerly head into the substance of Paul’s analysis, exhortation and teachings. But in doing so, we miss an opportunity better to understand the blessings of God in His plan for humanity, the plan of being in Christ […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Halloween

The American culture and that of other countries around the world are approaching their celebration of Halloween. At the same time, we are looking through and beyond that celebration to Thanksgiving, the opposite of Halloween. A bit of internet research gives this history of Halloween: Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Unevaluated Faith

Today, the Holy Spirit has us continuing in the study of Spiritual Deceptions. Today we are focused on the spiritual deception of unevaluated faith. What is “unevaluated faith”? First of all, it is very personal – your faith, and my faith, that we are focused on. Second, it is a reminder that from time to […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Apathy

The Grasshopper in the story of The Grasshopper and the Ants, of Aesop’s Fable and of the 1934 Disney film short by the same name, had as his signature and theme song, the one often sung by Shirley Temple, that “the world owes me a living”. This philosophy of life empowered the Grasshopper to party throughout […]

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The Spiritual Deception of Misplaced Trust

In this present age, our foundations are shaken. In recent days our foundations have been shaken daily. Why is this issue of “foundations” so important? It is because “foundations” are what we trust in. It is that simple as a concept. When you talk about foundations, you are talking about something to trust in. In Matthew […]

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Spiritual Deception of Not Supporting Israel

Almighty God, the creator of the universe, sovereign over the universe, Ruler – indeed (Genesis 14:19) the Possessor — of heaven and earth, and all that is in it chose the seed, the offspring of a man first called Abram, then Abraham, to be a special, the most special, nation of all the earth. That […]

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The Snake of Islam

Another Chaper in Series on Religious Freedom The remembrances this week, this weekend, of the persecutions of Sept. 11, 2001, bring troubling thoughts to our minds, and not just lingering memories of the tragedies experienced by those, who died, those who were injured or sickened, and their loved ones, not just an overwhelming gasp, still […]

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Let Freedom Ring

Today, as we remember the birth of this country, and the blood shed to establish the fundamentals of religious freedom, we are thankful for the vision and the courage of those Founding Fathers who lived on the cutting edge of what God was doing in their generation, as God used these men – each imperfect […]

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Understanding Religious Freedom

Memorial Day 2010 Memorial Day is a day to honor America’s heroes of war, our soldiers who have died in defense of liberty. After the Civil War, in several communities around the country, people gathered to commemorate and honor those fallen warriers of freedom. (According to Wikipedia, and Professor David Blight of Yale), it is […]

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Christian Character Part 14

Living in the True Church Last week, we had a brief visit with Revelation 18:4, “And I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.’” This is a call to the purifying and therefore purified church, but how do […]

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Christian Character Part 13

The Struggle for Steadfastness in Life Let us re-read from our Call to Worship, Psalm 95: 6-7, and continuing through v. 11 Oh come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His […]

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Christian Character Part 12

Carry Your Passport at All Times When you travel abroad, you must carry your passport at all times. I am told that in Europe and Africa, passports are often used for identification even within countries, as the countries are small and people frequently travel between them, and often have their passports with them at all […]

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Christian Character Part 11

Faith: a Tale of Three Rivers Continuing in our series on Christian Character, we look back to the last message, on Jesus Christ, where we saw Him as the creator and exemplar of Christian Character, so demonstrated in His last earthly Passover, at the Garden of Gethsemane and his unwavering, though faltering, walk to the […]

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Christian Character Part 10

Jesus Christ This is the tenth (sic, ninth) message in our series on Christian Character. It comes to us in God’s magnificent timing on Easter Sunday 2010. Today, we honor and glorify Jesus Christ in the defining process of His character, in which He set His standards for all time for all people. His standards […]

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Christian Character Part 9

A Prayer for America and God’s People Lord, we pray in Jesus’ Name, His Holy Name, for America and for God’s people, that You will have mercy on us all. We live today in a time in Your dialectic of history in which nations conspire against the Godly, when, even in our nation, our leaders […]

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Christian Character Part 8

Not Ashamed of the Gospel of Christ The title of the message comes from Romans 1:16, another true measure of Christian Character is whether or not we are ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s read Paul’s words, beginning in Verse 15, “So, as much as it is in me, I am ready to […]

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Christian Character Part 7

Be of Good Cheer Be of Good Cheer!! Even though the Swine Flu H1N1 has backed way off its epidemic threats, the times and seasons around us are no less tough this week than last week: earthquakes, tsunamis, wars and rumors of wars, financial and economic weakness, marriages and families under stress, illness and aging, […]

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Christian Character Part 6

Hypocrisy and Judgmentalism In this series of studies on Christian Character, we need to realize that we have looked at a number of issues, but we have not really focused yet on the foundational concept that what defines Christian Character is the commitment one makes, in humility, repentance and love, to live out the admonition […]

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Christian Character Part 5

Marriage (Valentine’s Day) Yes, today is Valentine’s Day. A day to celebrate love, especially the love we share in marriage, and so today, at the risk of some meddling, I am led to share with you about marriage. And while Valentine’s Day is a good day to celebrate marriage and family, it is also a […]

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Christian Character Part 4

Serving God and Others At a wedding we attended yesterday, we were struck by the gravity of the minister’s admonition to the couple: “Your happiness will be found in your spouse’s well-being.” The quest for marriage, and the right marriage partner is often defined in the question of who makes me happy. This admonition challenged […]

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Christian Character Part 3

The Ten Most Wanted List We have started off this year, 2010, in a study of Christian Character, of which this message is the third in the series. We have considered that, as with a New Year and with New Year’s resolutions, a commitment or rededication to Christ is a place and season of New […]

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Christian Character Part 2

What’s Up, Dude? The question today is the foundation for today’s sermon: What’s up, Dude? You see, God wants us to examine ourselves (1 Corinthians 11:28; Galations 6:4) and figure out where we are in the present of our lives. That means we will be looking back, somewhat, at where we have been, and we […]

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Christian Character Part 1

New Beginnings When you think about it, New Year’s Day is just another day – yet by an artifice of the mind we decide that it is the advent of a New Year, as the ball descends in Time Square, as the fireworks explode in our neighborhoods, and elsewhere. It is a traditional time for […]

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The War of Holiness Part 5

God, Man, and Society Part 3 Today, we continue in our study of the structure of the relationships of God, Man and Society. Our present focus is on Romans 13:1-7 and in our last message (July 5), we came to some understandings about power and authority, in a general sense, from the Greek words of […]

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The War of Holiness Part 4

God, Man, and Society Part 2 Overview from last week: God put man to live in social situations, requiring social organization, and God has an interest in man, and his relationship to God, and man’s individual relationships to each other, and man and society’s relationships to each other. God has a particular interest in nations […]

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The War of Holiness Part 3

God, Man, and Society Part 1 Introduction In the Great Commandment of Matthew 22, we are taught to understand the importance of man’s relationship to God, and man’s relationship to man, and that man’s relationship to man is important to God, is prescribed by God and that we are called to relate to our fellow […]

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The War of Holiness Part 2

On June 7, we received Part I of this message, The War of Holiness. We were reminded that God has called us, (2 Tim 1: 8-10) with a holy calling, to holiness in Christ Jesus, and it is our responses to this call which divides, and has always divided, the world. This division of the […]

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The War of Holiness Part 1

God has called us to holiness in Christ Jesus, and it is the response to this call which divides the world. That division, on a public and personal scale, is warring, war-like and real war: it is The War of Holiness. If profoundly affects all of us because of the power of choice which God […]

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Thanksgiving 1621-2011

The original Americans who started the American tradition of Thanksgiving were dissenters in Europe, and they went on a pilgrimage of faith to the New World, America, and thus became known as Pilgrims. They arrived at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1620, and had their first Thanksgiving service one year later, 1621. Plymouth Rock […]

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The Godly Parent

Being a father myself, this seemed like an easy thing for me to preach about. It’s really not. How hard can it be? Have kids, be a Godly parent. Raise them right, show them how to be an adult. Should be easy right? You see, most men, in fact, almost all men can father a […]

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