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I Am Very Talented - Just For Laughs

                               

Zero Talent

                                 

If God

                                    

Blessed Are You, O Lord - Book of Common Prayer

Blessed are you, Lord God of our salvation,
to you be praise and glory for ever.
As once you ransomed your people from Egypt
and led them to freedom in the promised land,
so now you have delivered us from the dominion of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your risen Son.
May we, the first fruits of your new creation,
rejoice in this new day you have made,
and praise you for your mighty acts.
Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Romans 12:1-2 The Message

                         

The Word Of God Is Powerful

“"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts. "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
Isaiah 55:9-11 NASB

Romans 12 - God's Word

Renewing your mind through the Bible is God's way to transformation. When you read, meditate upon, and apply God's word in your daily life, you are changed from the inside out.

Excerpt from Renewing Your Mind at YouVersion.com

Follow Me

13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,”Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. 15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Mark 2:13-17 NIV

Discipleship Is Important

Discipleship - These Things Can Help Measure It

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God's Power

Never measure God’s unlimited power by your limited expectations.

ODB

Prayer - Life Changing Conversation

Conversation with God leads to an encounter with God. Prayer is not only the way we learn what Jesus has done for us but also is the way we “daily receive God’s benefits.” Prayer turns theology into experience. Through it we sense his presence and receive his joy, his love, his peace and confidence, and thereby we are changed in attitude, behavior, and character. 

Excerpt from PRAYER by Timothy Keller 
Reprinted by arrangement with DUTTON, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random 
House Company. Copyright © 

Together

COMMUNITY by Joshua Dubois

 

TOGETHER

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

                                                                                                                                                                Hebrews 10:24-24

The value and dignity of the individual…is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with frictionless harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete.  He cannot find his fulfillment outside the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must “die to self” if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute “we must obey God rather than man.”                       -Reinhold Niebuhr, the Irony of American History

Lord, wrap me not only in your love but also in connection with other people. Show me the way toward brothers and sisters who will edify me, and I them. Place me within your community. Amen

 

Tyrone R. Lawton

"As iron sharpens iron ...so does one man sharpens another"

                                                                      Prov. 27:17

Today and Everyday

                              

Draw Near

Jesus is the mediator between us and God (1 Tim 2:5; cf. Heb 8:6; 12:24). All ancient lands and cultures had temples, because human beings once knew innately that there was a gap, a yawning chasm, between us and the divine. God is great and we are small—God is perfect and we are flawed. Temples were places where an effort was made to bridge that gap. Sacrifices and offerings were made and rituals observed by professional “mediators” (priests) who sought to bring the remote divinity near. All such efforts were understood to be partial and fragmentary. No religion claimed that the gap could be closed. 

Aristotle, for example, said that while it might be possible to venerate and appease the gods, actual intimate friendship with a god was impossible. The philosopher reasoned that friendship requires that both parties share much in common as equals. They must be alike. But since God is infinitely greater than human beings, “the possibility of friendship ceases.” 

Now, however, we have the ultimate mediator and priest to end all priests (Heb 4:14 –15). He eliminates the gap so that we can know God as friend (cf. Ex 33:11). It is because the Son of God was “made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb 2:17). And because “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but . . . has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin,” we are able to “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence” (Heb 4:15–16). 

Here, then, is a claim that Aristotle—indeed, all the other philosophers and religious teachers of the world—would find outrageous. How could God be our intimate friend? How could we approach him with complete confidence? It is because God became like us, equally mortal and subject to suffering and death. He did it so we could be forgiven and justified by faith apart from our efforts and merits. That is why we can draw near. 

Excerpt from PRAYER by Timothy Keller 
Reprinted by arrangement with DUTTON, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random 
House Company. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Keller

Grand Opening

                           

Prayer Timothy Keller Thoughts

Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray, healed people with prayers, denounced the corruption of the temple worship (which, he said, should be a “house of prayer”), and insisted that some demons could be cast out only through prayer. He prayed often and regularly with fervent cries and tears (Heb 5:7), and sometimes all night. The Holy Spirit came upon him and anointed him as he was praying (Luke 3:21–22), and he was transfigured with the divine glory as he prayed (Luke 9:29). When he faced his greatest crisis, he did so with prayer. We hear him praying for his disciples and the church on the night before he died (John 17:1–26) and then petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Finally, he died praying. 

Immediately after their Lord’s death, the disciples prepare for the future by being “constantly in prayer” together (Acts 1:14). All church gatherings are “devoted . . . to prayer” (Acts 2:42; 11:5; 12:5, 12). 

The power of the Spirit descends on the early Christians in response to powerful prayer, and leaders are selected and appointed only with prayer. All Christians are expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life. In the book of Acts, prayer is one of the main signs that the Spirit has come into the heart through faith in Christ. The Spirit gives us the confidence and desire to pray to God and enables us to pray even when we don’t know what to say. Christians are taught that prayer should pervade their whole day and whole life—they should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). 

Prayer is so great that wherever you look in the Bible, it is there. Why? Everywhere God is, prayer is. Since God is everywhere and infinitely great, prayer must be all-pervasive in our lives. 

Excerpt from PRAYER by Timothy Keller  
Reprinted by arrangement with DUTTON, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Keller

The Sacrifice

John 20: 1-10 NIV - Easter

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.