What is the gospel? A simple question and yet complex. When I moved to China and started reaching out to atheist Chinese students, I thought they do not know that God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. How can they avoid seeing God like a super hero? That proved to not be the problem. Chinese people worried about face as they were insecure as raised in a high criticism culture. They had trouble seeing God loved them and being good enough …
The thought that we are brothers and sisters with other believers exists in the Church. Jesus started it. Why did Jesus call us brothers and sisters? 8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those …
So this post might be a word more to the introverts. Sins of omission is not in the Bible and i focus on main things, so I will be careful. Being a talkative extrovert, I have often had to go to people to apologize for something I have have said. However, do we ever sin by not saying something? We are commanded to love. Failure to do this would be an act of omission. I believe less talkative introverts could …
Aristotle was the dominant thinker in Europe for over 1000 years. He said clearly the earth is permanent and has no beginning and no end. Christians learned from God that the earth has both a beginning and an end. The disagreement divided us from the non believers. In the recent 100 years, science has decided first that the universe had a beginning and more recently that it has an end. How should we see the big bang? We could say …
God made each of us with different personalities and different families to make a fun and useful world as we cooperate. Men and women and emotions is yet another issue of how God made us different. Men can block off their emotions in crisis and be great. Women can keep emotions open and can comfort in ways that men often cannot. In the post modern age, many women are learning to be tough and succeed in a man’s world. Men …
Jeremiah lived a hard life. The Babylonians were the mortal enemy of Israel. They ultimately ended the kingdom of Judah, destroyed the Temple and gates and sent them all into exile. God gave Jeremiah the job to tell the people to surrender to the Babylonians. So, the people from top to bottom hated him. God had him live as a traitor to his own people. He began as a normal prophet telling the people to repent or God swill destroy …
The Bible has 66 books written over 1400 years by mostly Jewish men. It has many genres of literature from history to poetry . It says many many things. Thus, the risks exist that we can make the Bible say what we want. I would like to add that we all do it. It is never good as we are making God instead of finding him and letting him change us. Any time we go to the Bible seeking to …
Romans 1 can feel dark. What starts us one downward path sometimes gets us lost in Romans 1 when the Apostle Paul announces all the bad impulses that come upon people. It is a sad path. Lets avoid the downward path. But all the ugly things Paul notes have one surprising cause. He first says: 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may …
God is not an individualist. In fact, the Trinity is beyond our understanding. God in three persons in perfect unity is our standard. Jesus further said in John 17: 20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have …
As an American living in China, I keep an eye on what the ambassador to China and the one for the US say? Why do I do this? The ambassador has no real power. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthian 5:18-20 that we are Ambassadors for Christ. See below. What does he mean by this? 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself …
