NCarolinian

Who is Jesus Christ of Nazareth to you? "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a good moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (C.S. Lewis) Jesus Christ left everybody no doubt who He is. He fulfilled every prophecy of ...

  "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." (Revelation 3:20) There are some people who Jesus is knocking on the door of their hearts and lives for the first time and they have a decision to make. There are those who know Jesus and accept Him as a visitor when they answer their door on Christmas and Easter every year. There are the soldout, radical believers in Christ. Then there are those who have Jesus inside their house, temple, body or life and seem to display Him proudly, but we only see one dimesion of Christ. What are outsiders really observing or viewing with these Christians? Have you ever had a room in your house or home called The Good Room ? This space is usually filled with fine furniture, always kept clean and everything is in its proper place like it's almost staged. Sometimes this room is not the most comfortable room in the house, but it is usually th...

This world wants to recruit you as its own and sink you deep into its systems or help you attempt to do life as you see fit. With this kind of set-up or mentality, the world has no room for Christ. Therefore, persecution is inevitable and suffering a certainty for the Christian. John records Jesus recalling to the listeners memory, " Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also." (John 15:20) However, Jesus encouraged His disciples about the coming persecution by stating, " Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:11-12) This is because He knew that after establishing His church, persecution and suffering would follow. 1 P...

In fishing you must load up a hook at the end of a fishing-line that is connected to a fishing pole with bait. Then with a fluid straight back motion with the arm you have your pole-in-hand with, you now come forward with a flick of the wrist, aiming to cast the baited hook at your targeted landing spot. Why? To receive a return of a caught or hooked fish. When we go through stressful situations in our lives, God calls us to perform the same kind of action spiritually. This time when we cast off our problems or stress, our target is God and our return could be any number of different named fish - peace, direction, hope, love, assurance and so forth. Of course if you are using a net to fish, you could catch all of these at once. David encourages us -  "Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken." (Psalm 55:22) Jesus echoes these sentiments and elaborates on just what you will receive -  “Come to me, all you who are weary a...

I have some bad news and good news for Christians. The bad news is that the condition of the church as a whole in these present, last days, is lukewarm and falling asleep, if not completely in dreamland. The good news is that Christ will be returning, mid-air, for His bride, The Church, anyway. Some people believe there will be a last pouring out of God's Holy Spirit on everyone (Joel 2:28-32) , before the Rapture. I hope and pray the world experiences that. However, if you read that full prophecy, I believe it has not been fulfilled in its entirety. In addition, Peter thought that prophecy was being fulfilled in his day as he gave a speech. He explained to the crowd in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit's ministry of the disciple's speaking the Gospel in all the different languages represented in the city at the festival that year was the fulfillment of the Joel prophecy  (Acts 2:14-41) .  Perhaps this Last Outpouring of the Holy Spirit has many occurances and one of them is f...

When Jesus spoke about Himself saying, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) - He did not use the article a for a way of life among many or a truth among many or a life among many. Jesus used the article "the" which is definitve in meaning only - only way , only truth and only life . However, God still gives the choice to accept and believe this exclusivity to us. Should we believe in Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, then we can receive His example, His  emphasis not to be wishy-washy or indecisive with our faith. He shot straight from the hip about who He was and what He was about. When we are aligned with Christ by faith, we should be the same. David and Jeremiah encourage all believers when choosing The Way, The Truth, and The Life to send down and out our roots and be grounded as a tree to The Stream of Living Water - Christ Jesus.  In  Psalm 1:1-3 , David says,  " Blessed is the...

"Do you think trees are beautiful? You’re in good company. God loves trees, too. By highlighting every sentence containing a tree in the first three chapters of Genesis, you can get a pretty good sense of what God thinks about trees. Nearly a third of the sentences contain a tree. Genesis 2:9 declares that trees are “pleasing to the eye.” This aesthetic standard does not waver throughout the Bible. Whether God is instructing his people on how to make candlesticks (Exodus 25:31–40), decorate the corbels of the temple (1 Kings 6), or hem the high priest’s robe (Exodus 28:34), the standard of beauty is a tree (and its fruits). If we were to examine the most comfortable seat in a home today, odds are that it faces a television. In heaven, God’s throne faces a tree (Revelation 22:2–3). In Genesis 2, God makes two things with his own hands. First, he forms Adam and blows the breath of life into his nostrils (verse 7). Then, before Adam can exhale, God pivots and plants a garden (verse 8...