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| I just read this blog on the importance of Baptism and the Local Church. Many Christians, now a days, don't feel the need to get baptised, or belong to one local church body. If you are interested click below: http://hershaelyork.blogspot.com/2006/02/dr-ergun-caner-weighs-in-on-imb.html If you are also interested, you can also read up more on Ergun Caner, who is a Muslim Background Believer (MBB), which means he was a Muslim before becoming a Christian. He has an awesome testimony. I'll just let you google him. | | |
| See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
--Hebrews 3:12-13 I ran into a Christian friend last week and I had just finished Bible Study (BS) group and we were talking and she said" in my bible study we usually just end up playing Poker". I didn't know how to respond to that. First of all they don't meet to study the bible but even worse than that, they are playing poker. I don't know how you feel about poker but I'm actually quite against it, and I choose not to play even if it's not for money. Most people our age don't understand where I'm coming from but it seems the older generation (my BS group) understands. That's because gambling is not the faux pas that it was in the church 20 years ago. Now a days some Christians think it's ok to gamble in moderation. I believe that there are a lot of issues with gambling. There is the greed aspect, there is the potential addiction, ruined lives etc. And even if Christians play for fun, without money, there is the stumbling factor...ie. one person keeps winning and find themselves tempted to play for money, gets hooked, has to go to GA (Gamblers Annonymous) etc... I mean, if by playing we cause even one person to stumble, their sin will be upon our heads. Sin is so deceitful... Satan wants to bring Christians down a slippery slope, and has. As I mentioned in BS, Chrisitans in N. America are soft because of the lack of hardship we face. We apparently blow which ever way the the cultural wind blows, we don't spend enough time examining why we do and do not do certain things. We really don't stand up for anything. We want to fit in with the world.... | | |
| Ever wonder how "congee", the name given to Chinese rice porridge, came about? I mean it doesn't sound anything like what we call it in Chinese - "Juk" (Cantonese) or "zhou" (Mandarin). I've always been curious about this "congee" business, even lost a few nights sleep over it... I kid of course, I'm not that crazy. Well curiosity appeased. Yesterday I invited my Bible Study Leader and his wife for lunch. They are an older East Indian couple. We went to a chinese restaurant and I ordered lunch from the set menu that only Chinese people have access to. These lunches always come with a bowl of congee. When the congee arrived, L, the wife said, " we have a very similar dish in India; we call it Kanji." Congee.... Kanji. NO WAY!! Congee is taken from the Indian word for rice porridge. So apparently they prepare it plain (hey, we do too) and they eat it for breakfast with other dishes (so do we). It's Southern Indian food (oh, that is why I never ate it when I was in India). So now the question is, how did we end up using this word for Chinese rice porridge? | | |
| And I realized also that the wounds we take are wounds He shares in and gives ultimate meaning to. In our woundedness, "we fill up in [our] flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions" (Colossians 1:24). In our woundedness, "the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows" (2 Corinthians 1:5). In our woundedness, "we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body," and though "outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:10,16). These wounds are a way of knowing the one who was "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3).... ... Here is the hard but healing truth: Wounds are, in Christ's economy, a means of God's wooing, It is the strange kiss of God, the reverse of the Judas kiss - a kiss to restore us and not to betray us. The pain becomes a narrow passage that leads down into a unique intimacy with the suffering servant. ~ Taken from the book, "Your God is too Safe", by Mark Buchanan | | |
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