Certainly Mary was shocked and amazed to receive the news from Gabriel that she would be the mother of God. I’m sure she had a lot of questions, but she placed her trust in God, with whom nothing is impossible. Two thousand years later we have a lot more answers about Jesus. And examination of six profound questions that might have been in the mind of Mary.
If there was ever a message America needs to hear, it’s a message about cleaning up our national vocabulary, because it seems more and more people have become more and more profane and obscene in what they are saying, not only on the airwaves, but also in public life. How profanity insults God’s character.
In your lifetime, there are lots of important questions you are going to need to answer, but none are probably more important than these questions: Does God really exist? And if he does exist, what is he like? And if God exists and you find out what he is like, what does he require of me? And in the Ten Commandments we have answers to all of those questions, where God reveals himself to us. He says, “This is what I am like and this is what I require of you.”
Pastor David Dykes explains wonders 5-7 of the Seven Wonders contained in Bible. Most people will never see all seven of these natural wonders, but anyone with a copy of the Bible can experience the seven wonders of the Word of God. When you get a firm grasp on the Bible and start applying it to your life, you’ll find Jesus on every page.
Give me a home anytime rather than a tent! That’s what the Bible promises us. This body is susceptible to pain, weariness, and hunger. Our resurrection body will be like the body of our Lord. In heaven there will be no pain, no sorrow, no sickness and death. That’s why death isn’t a scary subject for a follower of Jesus Christ.
The future of America is at stake in every Presidential election, but the future of the universe doesn’t depend on who is sitting in the White House in Washington. It all depends on Who is sitting on the Great White throne in heaven. The election spoken of in the Bible is the act whereby God elects men and women to be His children. It is a Divine Election for salvation. And it is possible to be absolutely sure about this election.
It’s interesting to notice the different ways animals respond to light. When a cockroach is exposed to the light, it goes scampering toward the nearest darkness. Deer often freeze. Moths fly right toward the light. People respond in different ways, too. You may be running from Jesus. Or you may be frozen by fear or doubt. But God wants you to turn from your darkness and run into the God’s light.
When the Bible says “It is appointed for men to die once” it is speaking of the absolute certainty of death. We live in a day of uncertainties. Nations rise and fall, the stock market goes up and goes down, spouses leave, jobs are cut back. Someone said the only two certain things are death and taxes. But there are many folks who have figured out how to avoid paying taxes, but nobody except Jesus figured out how to cheat death. It’s the only true certainty.
When the Bible speaks of the heart, it is referring not to the fist-sized muscular pump in your chest, but to the moral and intellectual control center of your life. In the Bible there are a little over 1,000 chapters, and the word “heart” appears almost 800 times. That means the Bible has something to say about the human heart in nearly every chapter!
I believe Satan has succeeded in convincing most Americans to believe his three greatest lies: (1) He doesn’t really exist; (2) Evil is good and good is evil; and (3) You can sin and you will not suffer. If you are going to have victory you must recognize him as a liar. The best way to resist the devil is to understand and claim the victory Jesus has already won. The devil really has no power over us because of what Jesus did on the cross.
Some of you may think God is harsh toward you right now because He’s stirred up your nest. Maybe God knows you’ve been stuck in your comfort zone too long. God loves you so much He is stirring up your life and He may be getting ready to push you out of your nest of complacency. Or you may have already been pushed out and it seems as if you’re plummeting toward a hard landing. Don’t worry God will be there to catch you. It may be terrifying at first, but God knows what He’s doing. Who cares? God cares–like an eagle coaxing its young to fly.
Can you really dress for success? It all depends on your definition of success. If success to you is working harder and harder to advance farther and farther in your career so you can buy more and more toys–then, yes, the way you dress will affect that. The Bible’s definition of success is this: finding and following God’s will.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly! Instead, God allows us to experience struggles, pain, and suffering because He wants us to be able to float above our circumstances like a beautiful butterfly.
Have you discovered the secret of God’s strength? If you do, the rest of your life can be the best of your life. Here’s how: Pray like never before, because God’s clock is winding down. Show love to others so deeply that you welcome strangers into your life. Give your life away to others–but do it in God’s strength.
Although Christians aren’t being thrown to the lions, our contemporary “crowd” still heaps abuse on everyone who is a fully devoted follower of Christ. They just use different weapons. Instead of spears, fires, and wild animals, the crowd today employs ridicule and scorn to make fun of Christians.
We expect life to be fair. We can’t understand why good people suffer, and bad people seem to be getting all the breaks. We want to say, “It just isn’t fair!” No, life isn’t fair, but God is good. And when it seems like your life is out order–when life malfunctions, there are four ways to respond.
Not only is God listening to what we say to others, His ear is attuned when we talk to Him. He always answers prayer. Sometimes people pray and don’t get the answer they want so they wonder, “Is God really listening to me?” He is always listening, but that doesn’t mean He will always grant your requests. I’ve said many times: When you ask for something and the request is not right, God answers: No. When you ask for something and you aren’t right, God answers: Grow! When you ask for something and the timing is not right, God answers: Slow. But when you ask for something and the request, the timing, and you are right, God answers: Go!
In some ways, marriage is like a car. It’ll get you where you want to go, but you’ve got to put something into it. If you got a new car and never changed the oil, or got a tune up, that new car is going to malfunction. I’ve never understood why a couple will spend so much energy, time and money on a wedding, but then they think the marriage will automatically be great. Marriage is a high maintenance relationship. Marriage is made in heaven, but it must be maintained on earth.
Imagine the shock of bearing all our sins to Jesus’ entire system—a sinless, holy man being defiled with the humiliation of every murder, rape, robbery, and lie every committed. It was the foul rottenness polluting His pure personality that killed Him—not the nails. Have you ever seen the significance in the fact that Jesus only survived the cross for six hours? It was common for crucified men to linger for many days before they died. The two criminals crucified with Jesus had their knees broken so they would die, but Jesus was already dead. If you were filling out a death certificate for Jesus and it asked for the cause of death, don’t write “crucifixion.” Don’t write “Roman Execution.” The true cause of death was carrying our sins. The strain of carrying that load overwhelmed His entire system and that’s what killed him.
WThe question, “What would Jesus do?” doesn’t work in every situation. First of all, we may not know what Jesus would do in any given situation. He was always doing the opposite of what people expected. In addition, if we knew what Jesus would do, that doesn’t mean we could do what Jesus would do. For instance, when Jesus saw his disciples out on the Sea of Galilee, He simply walked out on the water to meet them. If you’re fishing out on the lake and I’m standing on the shore, and I want to join you, I know the answer to “What Would Jesus Do?” But that certainly doesn’t mean I could do what He did! The only time we can be 100 percent sure we can ask and answer the question WWJD? is when we are suffering.
When we were born the first time, we were born into this world. This is the world you can see, smell, taste, hear and feel. When you experience a spiritual birth, you are born again into a new world. From that moment on, we belong to a different world and we no longer feel at home in this world. There are two kinds of people living on this rock-the natives and the aliens. The natives are the ones who live for this world, the aliens are the ones who live here but realize there is another world to live for.
From my years of study concerning Roman crucifixion, I’m prepared to say The Passion comes closest to portraying the brutality and horror of scourging and crucifixion. But, for the sake of decency, it STILL falls short of the full brutality of what really happened. Special effects and make up can’t reflect the hideous effects of being beaten with metal balls embedded in the ends of leather thongs. Just ask any ER physician or state trooper how much blood the human body is able of spilling and you’ll realize the movie was tempered in that respect. And there is ample documentation that the Romans stripped prisoners nude for the scourging and crucifixion to add to their shame. As bad as the graphic torture was, I came away thinking we had been spared from the full horror of it.
Right now, some of you are in bondage. You may chained to your past, or by your problems, or by your pain. You’re still bleeding from some emotional or relational beating that you endured. You may think, “Well, when God sets me free, then I’ll praise Him.” No! Start praising Him NOW and you’ll find that the chains slipping away. Pardon me for using so many song lyrics, but I can’t help but remember the great lines in the old song from the group Truth that says, “For the chains that seem to bind you serve only to remind you that they drop powerless behind you when you praise Him” Have you discovered the liberating power of praise?
In America today, it’s okay to be religious and to talk about God in vague terms. But if you start talking about the blood of Christ, or that Jesus is the only way to heaven—watch out, you are going to be in trouble. As I’ve predicted for years, we have arrived at a time where Bible-believing Christians are labeled as mental Neanderthals because we oppose such liberating ideas as same-sex marriages. But that’s the way it’s always been. One of the early Christians, named Stephen, had the audacity to stand up and say that Jesus was alive and standing at the right hand of God, and what did they do? They stoned him to death.
A religious hypocrite is someone who talks about praying but seldom prays. They talk about how the Bible is the Word of God, but they seldom read it or carry it to church. People who don’t go to church often use the presence of hypocrites to keep them away. When someone says to me, “I don’t go to church because it’s full of hypocrites,” I usually respond, “Well, come on anyway, we’ve always got room for one more!”
People who jump to conclusions and lose their temper seem to have motto in life: Ready! FIRE! Aim! They’re impulsive and volcanic in their anger. You can often tell about the character of a person by that which makes that person lose their temper.
Have you ever heard the expression “prime the pump?” Back in the days when people used hand water pumps, you had to pour water into the pump to often get water flowing out of it. Think of your resources as the jug of water–and then think of God’s blessings as the cool, stream of gushing water.
There are things in our lives which are like the frets on the neck of a stringed instrument. And it seems like our patience gets shorter and shorter and our endurance gets tighter and tighter and the pitch of our life grows higher and higher, until it seems like you can hardly stand it.
Telling others about Jesus must be our top priority. How can we be content to go to heaven when there are thousands around us who haven’t yet trusted Christ? It’s as if we have been rescued from drowning and we’re sitting in the lifeboat of salvation while all around us the water is full of drowning people who are calling out for help.
The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We know that’s not true. We know that sticks and stones leave one kind of wound that you can see, but words create another kind of wound—invisible—but every bit as painful and sometimes even more painful.
People in our culture are hungry to be connected. We are a generation of “screenagers” that spends hours in front of a computer screen or a video screen trying to connect with the people we see on television. The best place to make friends and build meaningful relationships in through the Church, the Body of Christ.
I’m amazed by how many Christians report they have never received a message directly from God. What are you listening for? Are you waiting for an audible voice? Or are you looking for God to write a message across the sky in letters a hundred feet tall? Or perhaps you check your email every day to get a message from [email protected]. Don’t hold your breath. You need to know God speaks to His children through His written Word, the Bible.
