Wednesday, October 08, 2003
We do not live in a "stinking" world. We live in a beautiful and wonderful world that is under the curse of sin, and defiled by man's evil deeds and thoughts, but the basic structure of the world is good and beautiful.
Good is much more fundamental to the nature of things than is evil. When God finished Creation, He pronouned it good. Sin is an unnatural growth, an anomaly. One day, the world will be delivered from the bondage of sin, misery, and death, and all of creation will be restored to the glory and beauty of God's purpose and plan.
Because of this, we live by hope, a fundamental component of faith. Because the child of god believes the promises of God, he can live in hope, and see the essential beauty of all things, at the same time grieving over the effects of sin. And where sin abounds, there grace much more abounds. Amen and Amen.
Good is much more fundamental to the nature of things than is evil. When God finished Creation, He pronouned it good. Sin is an unnatural growth, an anomaly. One day, the world will be delivered from the bondage of sin, misery, and death, and all of creation will be restored to the glory and beauty of God's purpose and plan.
Because of this, we live by hope, a fundamental component of faith. Because the child of god believes the promises of God, he can live in hope, and see the essential beauty of all things, at the same time grieving over the effects of sin. And where sin abounds, there grace much more abounds. Amen and Amen.
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Sunday, October 05, 2003
What a wonderful blessing church was today. Lee Johnson, a student at New Geneva Seminary, spoke on the subject of thankfulness. I am convinced that the root of our misery in the world is our thankless hearts. You cannot hate a person you are thankful for. You cannot hate your mother and your father if you are thankful for the blessings and the gift of life. If we believe that God is present in the fall of a sparrow, then it is certainly true that God is involved in the creation of a human being.
If you can believe that God loves you and has redeemed you in Jesus Christ, and has a purpose and plan for your llife, then it follows that you will be thankfor for the mother and the father who were used of God to bring you into the world with the genetic characteristics that prepared you for God's purpose for you. It is a bitter unthankful person who says, "Well, I didn't ask to be born," thus despising the greatest of all God's gifts.
If you can believe that God loves you and has redeemed you in Jesus Christ, and has a purpose and plan for your llife, then it follows that you will be thankfor for the mother and the father who were used of God to bring you into the world with the genetic characteristics that prepared you for God's purpose for you. It is a bitter unthankful person who says, "Well, I didn't ask to be born," thus despising the greatest of all God's gifts.
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