Month: October 2017

One of the reasons believers struggle with assurance of salvation is that they are looking in the wrong place. A common error is that we take our eyes off our Saviour and we begin looking at our own faith or we look at our own life. As we gaze upon SELF we get discouraged very quickly.   The believer looking within:   As I look at my own faith, I get discouraged. My faith seems to be shaky. The more I look at my faith the more I begin to wonder and question: “Do I really believe as I should? …

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Dr. Mike Murphy “How can you believe Christians when they thought the world was flat?” “The Bible teaches there are unicorns!” Go to any atheist website or Facebook page, and you will see the most outrageous claims about Christianity, the Bible, and God. You name it, and you will see it. The more outrageous the better. From the quotes you see above, to those that state Christians were responsible for the Dark Ages, anything is fair game. So how do Christians answer these claims? And how do we counter this foolishness? The answer is simple. We use the greatest of …

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Dr. Mike Murphy I cannot even begin to imagine what those forty days must have been like for Caleb. To have seen with his own eyes everything the Lord had promised. To have tasted the milk and honey the Lord had told them flowed from the land. To have seen grape bunches so large it took two men to carry them. Every word the Lord had promised, his eyes had just seen. But as he returned to their camp in Kadesh with the other eleven scouts, his ears must have deceived him. The words he heard spoken did not match …

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Her hap was. Yes, it seemed nothing but an accident, but how divinely was it overruled! Ruth had gone forth with her mother’s blessing, under the care of her mother’s God, to humble but honourable toil, and the providence of God was guiding her every step. Little did she know that amid the sheaves she would find a husband, that he should make her the joint owner of all those broad acres, and that she a poor foreigner should become one of the progenitors of the great Messiah. God is very good to those who trust in him, and often …

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by Charles R. Swindoll  Job 26:1–14 26 Then Job spoke again: 2 “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the weak! 3 How you have enlightened my stupidity! What wise advice you have offered! 4 Where have you gotten all these wise sayings? Whose spirit speaks through you? 5 “The dead tremble— those who live beneath the waters. 6 The underworld is naked in God’s presence. The place of destruction is uncovered. 7 God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. 8 He wraps the rain in his thick clouds, and …

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Reflections Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2) According to Greek scholars, this verse could be paraphrased, “It has never yet been made manifest what we shall be, but we know that when what we are is manifested, that it will be out of His likeness, and that this will enable us to see Him as He is.” This is based on the original Greek …

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Pete Garcia I died on March 14th, 1999. It was a Sunday and I was just two months shy of my 49th birthday. I grew up in a small town, with normal people. Nothing ‘fantastical’ ever really happened to me. I was ordinary, unknown, and just part of the anonymous unwashed-masses residing in flyover-country USA. I thought I had lived a good life. I wasn’t a “saint,” but I wasn’t “evil” either, doing what I thought evil people did; like killing, raping or robbing people. I went to church most weeks. I worked hard at a good job, took care …

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May the strength of the Everlasting God carry you through whatever you’re facing — today and always. Isaiah 40:27-31 (KJV) 27 Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? 28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even …

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Reflections For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (I Cor. 13:12) The glass through which we NOW, “see darkly,” is natural man. Not necessarily sinful man, but natural man. Even though Christ dwells in the believer, and this equips us with the capacity to grow to see Jesus Christ, in this age, and in this body, we will never be completely free from our natural man. To one degree or another, we will see through this glass darkly …

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Philippians 3:12 “Not that I have already attained or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.”  _____________________________________________________________ How encouraging that the great Apostle Paul would confess his great need for growing deeper in his pursuit of God. His admission brings me great hope and tells me much about our own Christian journeys. After he had experienced so many miraculous encounters in his life, from meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road to declaring the Gospel to the Emperor of Rome, Paul never fully arrived …

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Pete Garcia In a theological world bent on consensus and ecumenism, you have to wonder why some things in the Bible are the way they are. Some things seem so fantastical, that to hold to them in a literal manner would immediately draw derision and division from the world. A seven-day Creation, a world-wide Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Red Sea crossing, David and Goliath, resurrection from the dead, and the Rapture of the Church to name a few. Did they really happen, or were these biblical accounts simply subjective object-lessons on faith? If only lessons, where do they …

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Romans 4:16-21  16 For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all 17 (as it is written, A father of many nations have I made thee) before him whom he believed, even God, who giveth life to the dead, and calleth the things that are not, as though they were. 18 Who in hope believed against …

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Dr. Mike Murphy “All religions are the same” “Any religion can get you to heaven” “Every religion worships the same god” We have all heard these statements over and over. We hear many discard and diminish religion, telling us that religion has no place in society. We hear many claim that religion is just a way to control men, to manipulate the world in a direction that religion wants it to move. We hear many tell us that this world has moved beyond religion, no longer in need of religion’s gods. And we hear many tell us that religion is …

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Job 24:1–25 David, in Psalm 139, makes the appropriate comment, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it” (v. 6). If David lived today, he would write, “This blows my mind.” The vastness of God’s inscrutability has a way of doing that to us—and so it should. If nothing else, the study of Job reveals that we don’t fully understand God’s ways. We cannot explain the inexplicable. We cannot fathom the unfathomable. So let’s not try to unscrew the inscrutable. If only the men who considered themselves Job’s friends had acknowledged that. …

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