Mission Faithwalk

                  For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (II Peter 1:5-8) He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:28)   Given the priority given to love in passages like I Corinthians 13, the list above is interesting. Of course, it ends with love while I Corinthians 13:1-8 describes love. But you know that person or those people you know you’re supposed to love, b...

                        What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! (Romans 6:15)                 God has forgiven our sins, past, present, and future. If we confess our sins, God will forgive us (I John 1:9). So, what’s the big deal if we sin? If God is a loving God, what’s the problem with our sinning? To answer this, let’s look at the concept of sin. God told Adam and Eve that if they broke His law about eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. So, what was the big problem with their eating? They died, and with them, so did every other human. We were separated from God. Sin separates. We like to think of sin as some minor thing that God gets bent out of shape about. But every sin is a brick in a wall we’re building between ourselves and God, between ourselves and...

                 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  (II Peter 1:3-4) Duct tape, WD-40 and bubble gum…all you need to fix anything, right? And the bubble gum is to give your mouth something to do besides use foul language. That’s sort of the way today’s passage sounds. All we need is…knowledge of Him (Duct Tape) and His great and precious promises (WD-40), and we can live a godly life, participate in the divine nature, and escape the corruption of the world. Of course, if you know me, I’d say “WD-40” is “WDA” What all this boils down to is that what we need in order to live the sort of life we like to think we dream ...

                 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments . (Deuteronomy 7:9) The first thing that comes to mind as I read this verse is that Scripture can and does include figurative language. The thousand generations is not some magical limit. When the 1001 st generation comes along, God can and does remain faithful and keep His covenant. The reality is that within those thousand generations, there is likely to be another generation, perhaps the 848th, that also loves God and keeps His commandments. If the thousand-generation bit was literal, that would require that God keep His covenant to the 1849 th generation. God’s certainly capable of keeping track of such things, but that would make His behavior contingent upon the behavior of those who love Him and keep His co...

                 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, (I Peter 3:15) Recently, I saw a comment from someone to the effect of “The only reason you believe what you believe is because your parents taught you to.” It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, and I have to admit that it’s the truth, sometimes. Even if we claim that God has revealed Himself to us or spoken to us, that could just be the way we’ve been taught to interpret it. Of course, those who make this claim (usually atheists) don’t generally have a much better claim for themselves. Either they believe what their parents taught them to believe, or they believe what some teacher (author, scientist, philosopher) told them to believe when they rebelled against what their parent taught. The problem is that the vast majority of w...

                 BibleGateway.com has provided another “before” verse. It specifically says that God gave us grace in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but earlier in the verse, it connects grace with purpose. I know someone who was taught that if she didn’t perform, God might “shelve” her. This is a variation on what Mordecai said to Esther about what would happen if she didn’t try to help her people, and what God told Ezekiel about what would happen if he didn’t warn his people about their sins. I’m not suggesting that there won’t be consequences if we refuse to do as God tells us. I’m suggesting that God’s plans include grace and are not so fragile that our failure automatically disqualifies us. But more than that. God planned all this before the beginning of time. He had a purpose for you and for me before the universe came to be. He knew that we would fall short, and He chose to work with us anyway. He created us in a way...