Jeremiah 3:15-17 - The blog of pastor.ctj

For me, this Passage in Philippians 2 continues to increase in meaning, better yet, increase in depth. Philippians 2:4-15 (HCSB) 4 Everyone should look out not ⌊only⌋ for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, (what was his attitude/mindset?) 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. 7 Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave , (He relinquished his sense of entitlement, and if anyone EVER had a the right to a sense of entitlement, it was Jesus) taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, 8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross. (His submission to the will of another, which was a mental and emotional thing, was manifested in his body, expressed as obedience) 9 For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name th...

The funny thing about orbits is that the further away from 'The Sun' a planet gets, the more inclined away from the ecliptic (the plane in which the orbits of the planets lie), and the more eccentric (far from circular) it becomes, until it looks more like a tilted oval than a circle... After a while, some no longer consider the celestial body whose orbit has become 'warped' as it were, even a planet... Funny thing... Additionally, faults in a planet’s crust, (usually caused by disruption/flux in its core) cause earthquakes which when powerful enough, can actually change the distribution of the planet’s mass, shift its axis, and shorten its days… I tell you, it's a Funny thing... What am I talking about? Read This: United Methodist Judicial Council to Decide Whether Denomination May Advocate Homosexuality

Note:   This piece came out of a debate that I was having on Facebook with a dear brother who is of the Arminian/Wesleyan/point of view... As I see it, the core problem here,  as always, is the sovereignty issue. Either we believe that salvation is a sovereign act of a sovereign God , or we believe that God’s will and salvific action is somehow secondary, or subordinate to man’s. So many believe that in fact God can only offer, in hopes that man will respond, but since they do not want to go quite that far, they’ll say that He, knowing that you would choose Him, chose you first. This is how most people try to rationalize Romans 8, and the doctrine of predestination. But it is, if you think about it carefully, quite silly actually. We ascribe complete sovereignty and omnipotence to God up until we get to man’s will. This appears to be God’s Kryptonite. He has the power to create and hang the stars, but cannot determine whether or not I’ll get sa...

Give glory to the  Lord your  God before He brings  darkness , before your feet stumble on the mountains at  dusk . You wait for  light , but He brings darkest  gloom   and makes thick  darkness . But if you will  not   listen , my innermost being will  weep in  secret because of your  pride . My eyes will  overflow with  tears , for the Lord ’s flock   has been taken  captive . - Jeremiah 3:16-17 (HCSB) In the past 2 weeks, I have seen: a)       A 'Prominent Evangelical Pastor’ announce that Mormonism is Christianity. b)       Another 'Prominent Evangelical Pastor’ stand in the pulpit of a major Roman Catholic Cathedral as part of what was billed by the host as a ‘prayer for Christian Unity’. This same pastor having told his congregants that he and a major Mormon apologist and public figure are ‘in c...

Blessings family, The following pages are the result of a conversation which occurred during our church’s Bible Study one evening in March of 2011. It is an elucidation of our understanding of the doctrine of election, its distinctives and how we should (if at all) approach this in terms of our testimony, and the sharing of the Gospel. Please be advised that i tend to use the names YHWH, for the Father God, and Yahshuah for Jesus. Why isn’t our testimony enough? First let me say that your testimony does not equal the Gospel. While your testimony can be used as a toll in the sharing of your faith, and as a part of the overall evangelistic endeavor, it cannot be used in place of, or even as a supplement to, the Gospel message. This is because of the following problem: The weight of one person’s experience in a qualitative sense is the same as that of any other person’s. Put bluntly, 5 pounds of gold weighs just as much as 5 pounds of dung. So then the differentiating factor is ...

Um… in this case, NO We are in an army, but it is not the US military. In that army, they say don’t ask don’t tell. In this army, we are to cry aloud and spare not. (Isaiah 58:1) Make a loud cry, do not be quiet, let your voice be sounding like a horn, and make clear to my people their evil doings, and to the family of Jacob their sins. Though they make prayer to me every day, and take pleasure in the knowledge of my ways: like a nation which has done righteousness, and has not given up the rules of their God, they make requests to me for the right orders, it is their delight to come near to God. They say, Why have we kept ourselves from food, and you do not see it? why have we kept ourselves from pleasure, and you take no note of it? If, in the days when you keep from food, you take the chance to do your business, and get in your debts; If keeping from food makes you quickly angry, ready for fighting and giving blows with evil hands; your holy days are not such as to make your voice c...