That’s usually when we have our biggest battles of the human conscience too..at night. When the lights are off and the quiet starts to creep in.
Some folks ward this off as much as possible by staying occupied with TV, movies, talking on the phone, keeping a numbing buzz with drugs or alcohol, playing video games or on the internet. Staying busy, keeping some background noise going on so that they won’t ever have to be alone with their conscience in the quiet.
If you’re deathly afraid of being alone in a quiet room, then you need to become more prayerful.
“For God did not give us a spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” – I Timothy 1:7 KJV
Because it is in those quiet times that the Lord’s voice is the most clear in our heart.
Trust me, you’d much rather have Him speak to you in the quiet, than for Him to have to raise His voice and silence everything else that you think is more important in your world. That’s some scary kinda stuff that’ll make your whole life flash before your eyes..you don’t want that there.
So take some time out for solitude and just listen.
No TV. No radio. No doors open. Windows closed. Turn your phone off. Quiet.
Some folks don’t want to do that, because they’re afraid of what He’s going to tell them. Especially those that He has already been speaking to but they’re acting like they don’t hear Him.
I’m telling ya mane, you gotta listen and pay attention to God. Because if you know that you’re one of His children, then you need to obey His Word.
The problem is, we get too hard headed and act like we don’t hear Him and go on doing our thang. We don’t want any rules, regulations, laws or anybody telling us to do stuff that we don’t wanna do.
I’m not telling you something that I heard about, I’m telling you something that I know from firsthand experience. I am a living witness.
And once you bow down and acknowledge Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you realize that your salvation was not free of charge.
We were bought with a price.
We are saved by an immeasurable act of love and obedience.
There are a lot of (black) folks here on the Southside of Houston who didn’t vote in the last election. I’m sorry, but I have a problem with ANY black person who does not exercise their right to vote. Because it doesn’t matter how rigged up you think George Bush has the voting system, our privilege to vote as a United States citizen did not come freely. It was bou
ght with the price of a lot of hard work, bloodshed and pain inflicted on our ancestors (read Born With a Grip).So when you think of all the people who marched and fought and died pressing the issue, pleading the cause for blacks to be considered as human beings by the United States government, it becomes very clear. Voting is NOT AN OPTION for black folks. We just need to do it. Period. There is no excuse.
Many of our ancestors died fighting for our right to vote.
Christ was crucified fighting for our right to live, yet He opened not His mouth.
And if you ‘call yourself’ a child a God, there is no excuse for not celebrating the most important day in the history of mankind.
The media (and a lot of church folks) call it Easter..but I’m a bit more old school than that.
When I think of what happened early that Sunday morning, the first day after the Passover, I don’t think Easter, I think Resurrection.
Of course, if you go to Acts 12:4 in a lot of Bibles, you’ll even see the word, ‘Easter’.
But if it’s a Bible that has a strong commentary, it will tell you that the original text did not have that word. Instead it had Pascha or Passover. Christ was crucified right before the Passover. The Feast of the Passover was a traditional Jewish celebration commemorating when the death angel ‘passed over’ all of the children of Israel’s houses marked with blood. It was a time to celebrate God’s deliverance of the Jewish nation.
One of the aspects of the feast was to sacrifice a spotless male lamb on the Day of Preparation, which was right before the Sabbath. You couldn’t use a sick or crippled lamb, you had to get the best one and it had to be slaughtered and bled kosher style.
Now, the sad thing is, is that there are a lot of people who go to church regularly, they might have even gone in their new Easter suit or dress with their brand new Easter hat. Carrying Easter baskets and looking cute, without a Bible in their hand and they have no clue what the Passover is about. Some people be TRIPPING.
There are a lot of agendas circulating around in the media today that are constantly assaulting the gospel of Christ.
You have scientists finding ‘missing link’ fossils declaring that man evolved from other creatures.
There are books and movies out depicting Jesus in a much different light than what the Bible states.
There are ‘lost’ gospels being presented which are causing more and more people to doubt the authority of the 66 canonical books of the Bible.
Don’t think all of this is just a coincidence.
There is an adversary who is hell bent on getting people to denounce Jesus Christ as Lord.
Only the Lord can defeat death.
There are other Biblical characters that were revived from the dead, like Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter, but all of these folks went on to die and be buried again one day. Christ was resurrected never to taste death again.
Some people are in church, but the church is not in them, because they don’t truly believe in the Resurrection of Christ. They just go to church cuz its ‘kinda cool’ or it’s a politically correct thing to do. Maybe they like the songs, or they’re just trying to get a blessing. They want to borrow some money from their grandma so they go to church with her to get on her good side.
Let me gone and tell ya’ll right now, if Jesus Christ didn’t come up out of that grave with all power and authority in His hands. If Jesus Christ was not resurrected. Then we shouldn’t even waste our time GOING to church.
Because once Jesus was resurrected, Christianity transcended all philosophies and religions.
Atheists and agnostics denounce all the ways mankind tries to reach up to God as ‘religion’.
But Christianity is not a religion, because Christ is God reaching down to man.
There are those who have yet to look at the big picture. And instead they see such debates like evolution vs. creation as harmless. But the problem with the monkey to man theory or even the molecule to man theory, is that it bypasses the fact that God made one man to start this whole thing off..Adam.
It’s not a small thing either. Because the Bible illustrates that through Adam, everyone who is conceived of a man and woman inherits a sin nature. That newborn baby hasn’t done anything wrong (yet), but he has that sin nature that is imperfect. And as sin entered mankind through one man (Adam), the wages of sin (death) are paid through one man, Jesus. The spotless Lamb that was sacrificed. It is God’s gift to us. Jesus is God with us..
Jesus is God in the form of a man. Flesh and blood. He laughed, He cried, He ate, He drank..Jesus walked the earth as a man.
That is what the Bible teaches us.
So when you have these weird books and ‘lost’ gospels show up, some people get confused and use this as a reason of why they don’t believe in Jesus, because they can’t believe that the Bible is God’s Word, because they perceive errors in transmission and/or translation.
This can’t be right! How can God make EVERYTHING in 6 days??
I don’t know how He did it, I just know only God can take nothing and make something..only God.
I heard the Red Sea wasn’t nothing but a shallow little stream when Moses and the Israelites were passing through it anyway..it wasn’t like it was a biggo river!!
I dunno about that..but even if it was a shallow stream, why can’t you see the miracle in Pharaoh’s army being drowned in it?
When the early church fathers got together to acknowledge the canon of God’s Word, there were a lot of different ‘gospels’ circulating around the world. Presented as ‘holy scripture’ when in fact there were spurious gospels written by agnostics, pagans and greedy men seeking power. The Old Testament (39 books) canon was already established during Jesus’ time on earth, so then we’re talking about the New Testament (27 books), the gospels and epistles (letters).
So there were 3 main criteria used to acknowledge ‘God inspired’ scripture. *
- The writing had to have a recognized prophet or apostle as its author (or one associated with them, as in the case of Mark, Luke, Hebrews, James, and Jude).
The writing could not disagree with or contradict previous Scripture. (which prophesies of the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah starting with Genesis)
The writing had to have general consensus by the church as an inspired writing.
(*John MacArthur Study Bible)
The gospel of Judas is not a ‘new’ thing. Neither is the gospel of Barnabas, the 14 books of the Apocrypha or any other of the countless Gnostic or rogue writings that tried to get ‘in’ to the Biblical canon during the 1st century.
Of course, the average person doesn’t study their Bible. Instead they give more time to the adversary, reading anti-Christian literature. Anything that you’re reading or watching that is trying to tell you that Jesus didn’t do what the Word says He did is from the evil one. And one of the biggest tricks the devil uses is making people think he doesn’t even really exist. He is the father of lies and the truth is not in him.
And of all the things that Satan will pull, trying to keep you away from walking toward the Light, you’ve got to know that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek after Him. You can’t stand still. You’ve got to spend some quiet time, studying the Bible for yourself. Meditating and praying. The Bible is the only offensive weapon we have in our full armor of God. (see Soldiers in the Hood). Everything else is defense. And if you don’t have that shield of faith, to deflect those fiery darts that are being thrown at us everyday all day, you’re not going to be fully prepared for this battle that is raging for your soul.
Darts that are trying to make you doubt and/or discredit the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Because if you have doubts and you don’t believe in your heart that Jesus rose from the grave, then you’re not a Believer.
Don’t fool yourself.
I know the Resurrection is hard to grasp for a lot of people, because the world has conditioned us toward disbelief. We have a hard time going out on faith because of all the evil that men do. We’re wary of anyone peeing on our head and trying to convince us that it’s raining.
But there is an unmistakable conviction awarded through diligent Bible study, fervent prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. God will open your eyes and your heart to the Truth. The question you have to ask yourself is, “Can you handle the Truth?” or are you just looking for a feel good religion that will let you do everything you want to do?
Christ is The Reason for Our Hope. If Christ did not get up out of that grave, we have no hope in this life or the next
Copyright 2006 Servinemup Ink
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