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That Which I Also Received

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  1 Corinthians 15:1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. 8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace whi...
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The Lord's Prayer

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The Lord's prayer was meant as an example of how to pray, not a script for what to pray (Matthew 6:7, don't use vain repetitions). This prayer is shown twice in the Bible, in Matthew 6 and in Luke 11. In Matthew 6, the prayer is nestled in a chapter all about seeking the kingdom and righteousness of God first rather than focusing on the praise and acceptance of man and meeting your earthly needs. In Luke 11 It's shown in a chapter about receiving the Holy Spirit and unforgiveness for those who reject the Spirit. The context is not by accident, we can see that each line of the prayer points to seeking God's righteousness through His Spirit. "Our Father which art in heaven" - it's only by receiving the Holy Spirit that God becomes our Father (Ephesians 2:18, Romans 8:15).  When we receive the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in new tongues we can then pray to our Father without it being vain.  If we call God our Father without having the Spirit...
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Seeking The Lord

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  I've had some thoughts on my mind about seeking the Lord.  And with this thought of seeking the Lord, we can include things like seeking the truth or searching the Scriptures.  My mind keeps going back to right before I was born again and thought I was saved.  I started really questioning why my life was at the place it was and if there could be hope for me.  If you'd like to read my full testimony you can find it here  but to get straight to the point, I had come to a place in my life where I was questioning if I was truly saved then why didn't I have the power to overcome my sinful behavior.  I was praying prayers like "God, have you hardened my heart like Pharoah?  Are you going to pour out your wrath on me and use me as an example?".  And while part of me reasoned if that was God's plan for me, at least I am part of His plan, a huge part of me wasn't ready to accept "screw up" as my fate.  I reached out in a local parenting group o...
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Accepting Jesus

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 If you've spent any time in modern churches you've likely run into some version of the phrase "accept Jesus".  Perhaps you were invited to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Perhaps it was an invitation to accept Christ.  Maybe you even took someone up on the offer to say the "sinner's prayer" and accept Jesus into your heart.  But do you know where it is in the Bible? The truth is, the Bible never tells us to accept Jesus anywhere.  And when doing research on when this doctrine was first preached, I couldn't find a starting place.  What I did find was a theory or explanation that the term has been used to simplify the Gospel and that it means to "take" the free gift of salvation.  The problem there though is that if you aren't told HOW to be saved, HOW to "take" the free gift of salvation, then dumbing down the salvation message to "accept Jesus" isn't really helpful. So today we will look at what the Bible...
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Mark 16:9-20

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  This post is just a copy and paste of the screenshots of slides and TouTube-generated transcript (with time stamps) from this talk on the last 11 verses of Mark.  If you're struggling like many with whether those last 11 verses should actually be in the Bible,  I encourage you to take a look at the evidence presented. It's easy to cling to the first argument we run across that confirms the beliefs we already hold, but if our desire is for the truth or for the Lord then we owe it to ourselves to dive a little deeper. 0:05      we're going to talk about something today that's fundamental really uh we had to testimony before and a common 0:11      theme in all of her testimonies is signs Miracles and wonders that are moving in 0:17      amongst God's people it's a wonderful proof that God is continuing his ministry the 0:23      ministry of Jesus Christ and um it continues in People Like Us 0:30    ...
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