묵상/스티브 멕베이(Steve McVey)243 What's The Big Deal About Sin? What’s the big deal with sin? To be more precise, exactly what is it about our sins that would warrant the kind of attention that the church world gives to the subject? Some who don’t understand the message of grace think that those of us who teach it believe that sin doesn’t matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate sin. I hate it when I see it in my own life and I hate it .. 2010. 2. 17. Getting Our Minds Right The fifth chapter of John tells the story of an afflicted man whom Jesus encountered. This particular man had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. As he lay by the Pool of Bethesda, he watched other people see their dreams come true. Every now and then, an angel would come and stir the water in the pool. Immediately afterwards, the first one who got into the pool would be healed of whatever p.. 2010. 2. 10. Knowing Your Value While teaching in the Grace Walk Conference yesterday, Grace Walk Canada's National Director told a great story that I'd like to pass along in this blog. Mike said that he was speaking in church one day when a man in the congregation noticed that Mike didn't have a watch. (Wonder what made him notice that??:) Anyway, after the service the man came to him and in a stammering sort of way said, "T.. 2010. 2. 8. What's It Mean to Walk After The Flesh? “I don’t know what to do about a problem I’m having. I know the Bible teaches that my old man was crucified, but he keeps coming back to life!” That's what somebody told me once after I'd spoken on the topic of our cocrucifixion with Christ. I understood why he would make such a statement. He didn’t understand the difference between the power of indwelling sin and his old sin nature. .. 2010. 2. 5. Does God Intend For Us To Always Be Happy? The contemporary religious world seems at times to have God confused with Santa Claus. To listen to some people, I'd come to the conclusion that their view is that our Heavenly Father always intends to give us exactly what we want, behave exactly like we expect Him to behave and arrange our circumstances exactly the way we want them to be. When these things don't happy so that we can be happy a.. 2010. 2. 3. Thanks To Calvary, I'm Not The Man I Used To Be After posting that last horrific southern gospel song, I thought equal time for the opposing viewpoint was deserved! :) Seriously, I'm not wild about the whole Southern Gospel Music culture, but this one by Doug Oldham is a classic. When I was in my 20's I shed a river of tears of joy listening to him sing. All these years later, I still find myself moved by his tenderness and style. Here are a .. 2010. 2. 2. The Nectar of Heaven Ingredients: 2 Family Size Tea Bags 1 Gallon Water 2 Cups White Sugar Place the tea bags in a small simmering pan containing about two cups of water. Bring to a boil. Steep for ten minutes then pour tea concentrate into gallon pitcher. While liquid is still very hot, add two cups of sugar. Stir. Fill gallon pitcher with water and stir. Serve over ice. On behalf of everybody who grew up in the s.. 2010. 1. 31. Disqualified by Sin? There are people who have committed sins that have caused them to think that somehow they’ve struck out, and God can never take their life and use it for His glory. They have believed the lie that you can commit sins so serious and so wrong that God will, as they say, set you aside and not ever be able to work through your life again. Nothing could be further from the truth. The message of gr.. 2010. 1. 31. Grace As A Doctrine Sometimes as I've traveled, people have said to me, "Our church is focusing on grace this year." When I'm told that, I can't but find myself thinking, "What did you focus on last year? What will you focus on next year?" I've even heard some say that grace is a very important doctrine and how important it is that we understand it. These kinds of statements sound good on the surface, but they com.. 2010. 1. 28. From Must To Trust Aspects of Spirit filled living which flow naturally from the lifestyle of one walking in grace become a millstone around the neck of one ensnared by legalism. I have often used Bible study and prayer as examples because they tend to be primary targets of legalism. It takes what God intended to bring us real pleasure and turns it into nothing more than a religious performance. We aren’t doing.. 2010. 1. 27. Is It A Sin To Be Depressed? Some Christians think that victory in Christ means we are to always feel good, emotionally. Some even go so far as to say that it’s a sin to be depressed. These people make an unbiblical, inaccurate connection between their emotional feelings and spiritual victory in their lives. That is a disjointed connection. The dots just won't connect. The truth is that you can be very low emotionally an.. 2010. 1. 25. The People God Uses For twenty-nine years after I trusted Christ, I prayed for the Lord to make me stronger. It seemed like the right thing to do and many Christians pray that way now. The reality of the matter though is that most of us are too strong already. In fact, many pride themselves on their resolute determination to live "the Christian life." It's really good news when we realize that God is not looking f.. 2010. 1. 22. Can We Go Too Far With Grace? Those who are afraid of the message of the grace walk have sometimes suggested that you can go too far with grace. It is from out of that unfounded fear that this lie finds expression. It is important to remember that grace involves God expressing His unconditional love and favor toward us; independent of anything we ever do or don’t do. Grace is personified in Jesus. So to say that you can g.. 2010. 1. 20. Befriending Unbelievers I've often heard it said and even used to say myself that we should befriend unbelievers in order to win them to Christ. That seems like it would be a noble reason to love people, doesn’t it? So that we can win them to Christ. But the truth is, that’s not a good reason for loving or befriending people. We befriend people, we love people because that’s our nature. It's who we are. To befri.. 2010. 1. 18. I'm Not Going To Pray For Revival Everywhere I go I hear Christians talking about how much we need a revival. Call me crazy if you want, but I don't agree. I seen revival. I've been in authentic revivals and I can tell you one thing about them that is always true: They come and go. They don't last. When I was a boy, we would have "revival services" in the church twice a year. I must say that it was often a good experience. In f.. 2010. 1. 16. You Can't Disappoint God When I was a legalistic preacher, I'd often speak of God's attitude toward us as if He were disappointed because we kept blowing it when it comes to the matter of sinning. I set out what I presented as His expectations about our behavior and went on to show how we let Him down when we failed to live up to those divine expectations. My whole approach to the matter was wrongheaded. To suggest tha.. 2010. 1. 15. Does Teaching Grace Lead To a Careless Lifestyle? I do grow weary at times of having to answer the paranoid legalists who are so afraid that teaching pure and undiluted grace may lead people to think it's okay to sin. The strange thing is that when I ask them if that's what the teaching causes them to want to do, they always say it doesn't. It's not themselves they're worried about. It's these other pitiful, weak Christians who might misunders.. 2010. 1. 14. Stop Trying To Stop Sinning Building on yesterday's blog topic about sin consciousness, let's consider this whole issue of how we are to relate to sins. The primary project for most Christians in the modern church is to reduce the number or frequency of sins in their lives. It's a sin management program that they devote themselves to with great zeal and sincere commitment. It all sounds so good on the surface. That's the .. 2010. 1. 13. Sin Consciousness There is an obsession with sin management in the modern church world that I think may fit under the category of "Idolatry." Some Christians talk and think more about sins than they do Jesus Christ Himself. "But don't we need to focus on overcoming our sins?" some may ask. The Bible says that Jesus came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. That's the reality we need to lock in on in life.. 2010. 1. 13. Should We Really Do Everything Jesus Said? Is it really true that we should do everything Jesus said? I've provoked criticism of my teaching at times when I've said that the answer to that question is, "no." There is a new movement of those who call themselves “red letter Christians”, who say: “I’m living by the red letters in the New Testament.” That refers to the Bibles that have the words of Jesus written in red. “I’m d.. 2010. 1. 11. Offending Weaker Brothers I've often heard the teaching that, as Christians, we shouldn’t do anything that might offend somebody. While there is a biblical truth about being an offense that we need to understand, it's also the case that many Christians have been put into bondage by faulty teaching about the passage in the New Testament which speaks about not being a stumbling block for weaker brothers. Some have misre.. 2010. 1. 8. The Christian Life Is NOT "All Of Him And None Of Me" I've been working on a manuscript for a book based on the 101 Lies Taught In Church videos that I posted on YouTube two years ago. Some of these lies seem true at first glance. Here’s one that sounds like an expression of genuine humility. “The Christian life is all of Christ and none of me.” A person who would make this statement could almost sound noble, like a super-spiritual person. I.. 2010. 1. 6. Dead Men Are Free From Sin Imagine Leo overdosing on cocaine and dying. They take his body to the funeral home and prepare it for burial. A few hours before the funeral starts, one of his drug buddies comes into the parlor where they have Leo’s corpse laid out. Nobody else is in the room, so his buddy walks over to the casket and leans over. “Hey, Leo,” he says. “We’re alone right now, man. I’ve got some good.. 2010. 1. 5. Does Your Church Sing Hymns or Choruses? An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. "Well," said the farmer. "It was good. They did something different,however.They sang praise choruses instead of hymns." "Praise choruses?" asked the wife. "What are those?" "Oh,they're okay. They're sort of like hymns, only different," said the farmer. "Well, what's the .. 2010. 1. 4. Future Sins Are Already Forgiven “It can’t be true that my future sins are already forgiven!” This was the protest I heard one day after somebody heard me teach that all of our sins are forgiven. I read her the passage from Colossians 2:13-14. Then I asked her these questions, which I encourage you to answer as you read them. 1. How many of your sins did God know about before you were born? (All of them.) 2. How many of .. 2009. 12. 30. Where Does God Live? I heard about two college students whose football team was about to get a goat as their new school mascot. There was much discussion among the students about where the goat would stay. One of the boys said to the other, “Why don’t we let the goat stay in our dorm room?” “What about the smell?” the other asked. “The goat will get used to the smell,” the first responded. Goats may g.. 2009. 12. 29. Spiritual Hunger Once we have encountered the love of our Father up close and personal, we become addicted for life. We just can’t get enough of Him. It’s as Jesus reveals Himself to us that we find ourselves hungering to know Him more intimately and to love Him more earnestly. Speaking from his own experience, St. Augustine said, “You flashed, You shone; and You chased away my blindness. You became fragr.. 2009. 12. 29. Bleeding Toes And Sufficient Grace Several years ago I had taken a shower early one morning. I slid the shower door open to step out of the shower when somehow it suddenly jumped off its track. The door instantly fell right to the floor with its edge landing straight across the top of my big toe, like a guillotine. (I probably wouldn’t become a war hero in battle, if this experience is indicative of my potential.) When the doo.. 2009. 12. 16. Unholy Hyperactivity One time I found myself lost in the woods alone. It was late at night and a friend and I were going fishing. We had left the car parked on the side of the road and had gone through the woods down to the water’s edge where our boat was tied. The plan was that we would load the boat with the supplies we had brought from the car, then he would take the boat across the lake to a bridge on the oth.. 2009. 12. 14. Are We Literally Righteous Or Positionally Righteous? For years I couldn’t reconcile what I saw taught in the Bible. I read verses that clearly say we are righteous (Romans 5:17, Ephesians 4:24, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, etc.), but struggled with my own inconsistent behavior. So I took this aspect of truth to be only a positional truth. My argument went like this: “We aren’t literally righteous. God only sees us that way. Our position is one of.. 2009. 12. 8. 이전 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 다음