One With Him

Pursuing Holiness 1 Thessalonians 5: 12-24 - We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.  Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. Reading this passage, you see that Paul is writing the Thess

What is Lacking? 1 Thessalonians 1:2-7 – “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.  For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.  And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers…” I just started the book of Thessalonians the other day and they think the author of this book is Paul because of the writing style and theology. If this is Paul, then, I love the way he is so sincere with his brothers in Christ. The way he starts every letter to his friends, he greats them with much remembran

Holiness Leviticus 22:31-33 - “Therefore you shall keep My commandments, and perform them: I am the Lord. You shall not profane My holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord.” This verse really stuck out to me today in my devotionals. It reminded me that because I love the Lord with everything I am, I must be obedient to the laws which he has set before me. You see, it’s a choice. I can choose ignore all of the things that God has asked of Christians to do or I can choose to obey and be blessed in the end. That’s the way the world differentiates between Christ followers and the world. Christians devote their life to the words of God and the world choices to solely satisfy itself. One of the things the Holy Spirit put here is do not profane the Holy name. Anything that we do as publicly professed Christians can either bring honor and glory to God or it ca

Self-Control Galatians 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Sunday, for our group devotionals, we are all sharing about a fruit of the Spirit.  I was randomly selected to do a devo on the topic of self-control. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I was going to share about it, only because I thought it was pretty straight forward. But, the more I looked into it, the more God opened my eyes to see it in a whole new light. I was talking with my overseer about it and she said that self-control isn’t about simply giving something up for a short time but it’s putting it in the Lord’s hands and not expect to get it back. I have never thought about that before. Sometimes, the things what we are taking a break from are the things that are separating us from truly seeing Gods face. The definition of self-control is the discipline given by the Holy Spirit